


This Charming Man

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Closeted Character, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-09-13 18:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16897611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: Pete White can admit a lot of things: he's a coward, he's a wimp, and he's probably not the nicest guy around. But the one thing he's never been able to admit are his true feelings. Told in anachronistic order, this is the ballad of Billy Quizboy and Pete White.





	1. Of Quizboys and Queen

_At a desert trailer_

If you had to choose one word to describe Pete White, it had to be coward. He knew it. He owned it. Being a coward had worked out well enough for him for most of his life. He kept a comfortable distance from other people behind a wall of caustic sarcasm. If he never let anyone in, he could never be hurt. Simple.

Except not. Except for the time he found himself in a trailer in the desert, his old enemy the sun directly overhead, staring morosely at the horizon. Every day was a circle from the bed to the kitchen nook to the step, where he watched the horizon sizzle in the heat like an egg cooking on a car engine. Tethered in place by sheer inertia, not being able to see any point in moving one step out of place.

And then the crunch of tires on the sand, the heaver footsteps of a large man. His reflection in a mirror-shiny set of aviator shades.

“Listen,” Brock said, wielding an oddly lumpy bag, “I'm not even here. We never talked. I know the little guy wasn’t on the best of terms with you but, ah...I can’t find anyone else around here. Little guy’s bound to be tender, he just lost the past few weeks of his life. He’s going to need some care. I’m going to be over in the Venture compound from now on, so you need to call me if he wigs out or anything. We’ll work out codenames and phrases later.” Brock set the bag down and turned to go. “...oh, and one more thing: take care of the little guy, will ya? No more dog fights.”

Pete watched Brock go, that ridiculous rat-tail bouncing on his muscular back, feeling his heart pause. It couldn’t. It wasn’t.

Pete unzipped the bag and felt the crashing wave of relief descend on him. Billy, (mostly) whole and alive. Pete hugged him and hugged him and refused to let him go.

And Pete White knew, right there, in that moment, what a coward he really was. Because despite all he had done to Billy, despite the downturn in their fortunes that could be laid entirely at his doorstep, the thought of being alone again terrified him.

~`~`~`~

_Outside the former Conjectural Technologies_

“Come on, White. Admit it. You’re not going to miss trailer life.”

Pete frowed from behind the safety of his parasol and his mirrored glasses. “I’ll miss freedom, Billy. I don’t like the idea of working for someone else.”

“Scho what’s the big deal? You work for me.”

“I don’t work _for_ you, I work _with_ you!”

“Asch _if!_ All you do is sit on your handsch while I do the actual work!”

“I do plenty! I procure clients.” White ticked the points off on his fingertips. “I do the computer work—”

“Oh yeah, coding in basic, that’sch real helpful—”

As they slipped into an argument as worn and comfortable as Billy’s Rusty Venture jammies, White couldn’t help but feel a pang. The trailer hadn’t been much, true, but it had been _theirs_. They had worked, played, threw bitchin’ karaoke jams. It wasn’t just the loss of Robo-Bo(although that stung like a thousand lemony papercuts) it was the loss of a life they had built separate from the Venture machine. Even though he had been desperate enough to tap that well once upon a time, White realized he had come to savor the times it was just them. Not accessories to someone’s midlife crisis, an actual goddamn force to be considered. For a time they had been their own super-team, with a nemesis and everything. Christ, this was like moving back in with your mom after college.

“And thank your lucky schtars _that’s_ not happening,” Billy said as the moving truck bumped along. “My mom is schacking up with the Action Man. Can you imagine trying to sleep with _that_ going on in the next room?”

“What makes you think I'd just come along for the ride to your mom’s condo?” White squinted out through the windshield.

“Umm, that’sch kind of what you _do_.” Billy propped his non-mechanical elbow up on the door. “You don’t work scholo, White, never have.”

White hunched into himself. This conversation had struck a nerve, so he shifted into sarcastic mode, “ohhh, yeah, coming from Lone Wolf McQuade. Remember when we got separated at Ikea? I found you over by the långfjäll trying to gnaw your other hand off. It had only been five minutes!”

But Billy wasn’t stung by the barb, he remained gazing out the window, smiling at some indeterminate future. “I wonder if we’ll get our own floor of the Venture tower. With a view of the city. I’d like that.”

White frowned at himself in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy the thought of lounging around on the Venture dollar, or even seeing Rusty more. But change had never brought pleasant things in his life, not ever. And like every time that fear had manifested, it trickled through the broken coffeemaker that was his psyche to become a toxic brew of verbal sludge.

“I’m just sayin’ this all could have been avoided if you had just _let the ball go.”_ He didn’t know why he was picking at the ball. It didn’t even matter anymore. But he couldn’t stop himself.

“It’sch not just the ball.” Billy produced the red sphere, wafting the smell of latex in the truck cab. “it’sch the principle of the thing. Everything St. Cloud acquires he does it just scho he can pervert it. What’sch after the ball, White? Prince’sch violet suede platforms on his horrible troll feet? Kermit the frog used as an oven mitt? If we yield even an inch of nostalgic ground to St. Cloud, he will take it all.”

“It’s just. A ball.”

“Right. And the codpiece from _Labyrinth_ is just a hockey cup schtuffed with a bunch of tissue paper.”

White couldn’t help it. He wanted to pick and pick at Billy until he exploded in an argument and they drifted back into familiar territory. But Billy’s good mood refused to be punctured, as if he had acquired armor against anything White could throw at him. And White realized that was what scared him. The possibility that he could no longer affect Billy.

_You don’t work solo, never have_ . Implying that he _couldn’t_ work solo if he wanted. He could, at the drop of a hat. The only reason he stayed with Billy was guilt. Guilt and the sweet, sweet moolah that drifted his way due to their combined efforts. Also the aforementioned bitchin’ karaoke jams. And weekend binge sessions of nostalgic television.

White conceded that he was having codependency issues.

Billy was staring out the window, humming _Personal Jesus_ to himself. God, in so many ways he really was a quiz _boy_ wasn’t he? Pete felt a twinge of the oddly possessive guilt he’d felt on and off for the past nineteen years or so.

~`~`~`~

_On the set of Quizboys_

White frowned. In his hands lay yet another rejection notice from a band. They didn’t want a disgraced DJ as a producer, thank you and goodbye. Christ, he was haunted by that college incident. One lousy joke and he was blacklisted?

It wasn’t fair. He _knew_ music, he felt it in his bones.

White rubbed his eyes before remembering the makeup. He wanted it to be the end of taping, there was a baggie of Columbian marching powder waiting for him in the dressing room. Half a toot, that was all he asked to get through the rest of the day. Despairing, he looked over at the contestants.

The new kid on the block sat upright at his podium like a model student, even as the other quizboys lounged with what little freedom was allowed them. He was new this week, after dethroning the creepy ginger kid with a bowl cut he had become _Quizboys’_ rising star.  Pete noticed that among the various prodigies, Billy was the only one without a stage mother hovering over his every move. He seemed more real than the other contestants, who moved and spoke like very well-behaved robots. It was Pete’s job to build a rapport with the contestants, so that was a handy excuse to stretch his legs next to the little genius. He noted a slight blush, a hint of stammer in the other’s speech impediment. Pete was flattered for a minute (kid was adorable) but put it down to a adolescent intimidation of being around an adult.

“So how are you likin’ the show, kiddo?” Pete leaned, hip cocked against Whalen’s podium. “I hope you don’t mind my sayin’ the audience is gaga for you.”

“I hope scho. I have a feeling Lady Mercy won’t be home tonight.”

Pete had not thought it anything more than metaphor until now, but he felt it: his heart actually skipped a beat. “You—you listen to Queen? Little guy like you?”

“Oh yeah. Alscho into new wave. Maybe a little darkwave. Hey, who do you think is a better frontman: Simon Lebon or Dave Gahan? I perschonally favored Gahan, but I think Lebon has a more eclectic range.”

Pete’s flabber was fully gasted. “You...wow. Quite a palate on you, and you’re only, what, eleven? Twelve?”

Billy’s face fell petulantly. “I’m schixteen.”

There it went again. Pete felt his face heat beneath the pancake makeup. “Really? Not really a ‘boy’ so much, then.”

“Ah.” Billy waved it away. “If it gets me a college fund, I don’t really care how old people think I am. Scho what got you into music?”

Pete felt a smile grow on his face. A real one, genuine pleasure. “I used to DJ in college…”

They spent the rest of that and many more commercial breaks building a rapport. As you do when you are host and guest.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech Tower_

“Tah-daaah!” Rusty flung his hands out, indicating the smallish yard that serviced the penthouse. “A pool and everything.”

Billy was boiling over with excitement. “This. is. scho. cool! Which room do we get?”

Rusty gave them a slightly sheepish look, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “Well, they say a good editor sleeps with paper.”

Billy’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“He means he wants us to stay in the R&D office. No go, Rust. We need actual living quarters. Like, away from any potential nuclear power sources.” White crossed his arms and gave a stern look.

“Oh come on, if inspiration strikes suddenly in the middle of the night…” Rusty caved from the weight of their glares. “Okay fine, I'll give you a room on 16.”

“ _Thank_ you.” Billy turned and stalked back into the penthouse, followed by a paranoid and parasol-less White who hunched his shoulders against the sun. “the nerve of that guy. Half this building isch empty and he just wantsch us to bunk down with the machines?”

“Hang on, when he said room did he mean room—as in _singular?”_

The two exchanged a look.

“Crap.” Billy hit his face with his real hand. “We’re in a literal tower and schtill bunking tandem.”

“Worse.” White was studying the map Hatred had given them on entry into the building. “At least we had a bathroom in the trailer. The nearest toilet is two floors away.”

“Fan-tucking-fastic.” Billy let his considerably-sized head clunk against the elevator surface.

“Aww, come on, I know plenty about of living out of one room. We get a hot plate and a rice cooker, it’ll be a snap. Trust me, I've made it through college with less.” Pete was not sure how he had switched to consoling Billy. Just that the quizboy’s dented enthusiasm made a little snag in his chest.

Billy sighed as the elevator dinged their way down the building. “At least the faschilities should be pretty good, right? JJ scheems like a spare no expense kinda guy.”

The elevator opened up on a space the size of a small airplane hangar.

Billy’s “wow” bounced off the distant walls.

White stepped off the elevator, eyeing the shadowy shapes all around them.

_“Here we stand or here we fall,”_ he said, _“history won’t care at all.”_

“Hmm?” Billy looked up from a robotic arm, which he’d been petting in a manner verging on obscene.

“Ah, nothin’. Just…” he let it trail off, because Billy wasn’t listening, he’s never listening when he gets that look on his face, like he’s just stumbled on a treasure trove of Rusty Venture merch. Pete White doesn’t factor into the equation.

And that’s how it should be.


	2. Bedbugs and Ballyhoo

_Desert trailer_

The interior of the trailer felt airless. The box fan moved the air around without cooling it. White had meant to get an AC unit but...he just hadn’t. (laziness? penance?)

Billy lay in the nest of pillows and sheets he had constructed in the trailer’s bedroom nook, face serene. The lid of his left eye sank over the vacancy. Probably needed an eyepatch. Well, they could look at that later, White wasn’t budging from the spot.

Billy stirred. Something very like a whimper came from his chest. God, he just _had_ to look so helpless, didn’t he? He looked even younger now than he had on the set of Quizboys, so small and helpless and _God_ White felt like a shit, an absolute shit, exploiting him like this—

Billy coughed and opened up his eye. He sucked in air like a drowning man. “Oh god, White? White!”

“Right here, pally.” White leaned out of the shadows and grasped his flesh-and-blood hand.

“White, what the fuck happened?” Billy was hyperventilating. “The lascht thing I remember was—was—”

White held his breath.

“....did I really leave you here in the desert?”

White exhaled. “Ya did.”

“When was that?” Billy was beginning to tear up. “I do—I don’t remember anything pascht that!”

“Easy, easy,” White tugged the sheet up around Billy and put his hand on the large, feverish forehead, “you’re here now, you’re with me.” He couldn’t, in all good conscience, utter the phrase _‘you’re safe’_ after that.

Billy burst into ugly sobs. “No, it’sch not okay, White. I schouldn’t have left home! I’m such an idiot! What was I thinking, telling my mom I wanted emancipation? I wasn’t ready! White—I lost my goddamn eye!”

Though he had promised himself he wouldn’t, White enfolded Billy in another full-body hug. “Hey, hey, that one’s on me, okay? If anyone’s the idiot, it’s the asshole who signed you up for a dogfight, okay?’

“You’re a dick,” Billy said from the sanctuary of White’s chest. A hysterical little giggle trembled up his spine.

“Complete dick. And a half.” White felt an ease to the constriction in his chest. “I’m just glad I found you again.”

Billy sniffled a bit. “White? Where are we?”

“My trailer. I parked it near the last place I saw you, just in case...just in case.”

Billy looked up, gripping White’s stained wifebeater with both hands. “You waited for me? In the deschert?”

For the first time he took in the peeling pink of White’s sunchapped skin, his three o’clock shadow. “Hey,” he said, voice tinting with concern, “are you okay? Have you been out in the sun?”

White chewed his lip. “Yeah,” he allowed.

Billy eased his grip on White’s shirt. “Why? I yelled at you. I left you. I don’t even have any money left to give you.”

That one stung. “Oh yeah, like I'm going to leave you to die in the desert just because I lost our cash.”

 _“Our_ cash?” Billy was indignant, which meant he was coming back to himself. “Need I remind you who earned that money? I didn’t schee you going toe-to-toe with junvenile delinquentsch in unschanctioned quiz battlesch!”

“Yeah? And who made the arrangements, huh?” White wanted to be gentle with Billy, ease him back out of his terror, but he couldn’t stop himself. The guilt was eating him up, and if he didn’t turn it back he didn’t think he could live with himself. “Would you have found any of the underground quizzes without me?”

“Do I need to remind you _why_ we had to go underground? It wasn’t because _I_ cheated for me!”

“I saved your heinie, Billy, they wanted that St Cloud kid to be the ringer, said he was more photogenic, but I went to bat for you. I said you were more appealing to the midwest demographic and you photographed better from the left, so there!”

Billy looked at him for a long moment. “...not anymore.”

It wasn’t funny. It was awful, everything was awful and they laughed because it was too awful to bear and when they stopped they were red-faced and breathless. White couldn’t get enough air, not in this tin-roofed sauna.

“Kee-rist it’s hot as ballsch in here,” Billy said, wiping his remaining eye with his robot hand.

“Well, I've been a little preoccupied, thank you. Anyway the nearest store is a liquor shop, hardly the place to get an A/C unit.”

“Well, we should get one.”

“All right.”

“Also schome furniture.”

“Okay.”

“And can we get schome different sheets? These feel like plastic.”

“They came with the mattress.”

“Really? What store did you get that from?”

“Erm, the side of the road.”

Billy rolled his eye. “You really let yourself go, White. How were you even living while I was gone?”

 _I could ask the same thing_. White made himself let go of Billy. It was harder than he expected. “We’ll look in the morning. Got Rusty to float us a little seed money.”

“Seed money, for what?”

“Conjectural Technologies! Placeholder name, better one pending.” White waved his hand. “I managed to guilt him into giving it to us, we _are_ old college buddies after all.”

It was so much easier to lie since he had cashed the physical check, which held not the title of Venture industries but one of the OSI’s many shell corporations.

“Cool. hey White?”

“Yeah?”

Billy’s face scrunched up. He looked like a pug when he smiled. Adorable. “It’s good to schee you again.”

~`~`~`~

_Outside the VenTech tower, post-P.R.O.B.L.E.M_

Pete shivered under the scratchy wool blanket cops always kept around for these occasions. Someone had given him a styrofoam cup cup full of hot cocoa that had been made with water and not milk. He sipped it so he had something to do, but grimaced. Billy always made it with milk. Full fat, too. He tongued one of the little dehydrated marshmallows and it dissolved on his tongue.

His head still throbbed, and he had to prop his elbows up on his knees to keep his shaking hands from slopping hot chocolate water onto himself. They’d told him that Billy had tried to carry him, firefighter-style, from the building. It should have been a ridiculous mental image, but he knew better, he knew because he’d seen Billy do it before on Spanakos. The fact that he couldn’t picture himself doing the same, not at all, was haunting him like the aftermath of a car crash.

“Look, Ruschty, he thought he was helping you.” For once, Billy was taking point while Pete sat out this round. The reversal made him feel even more vulnerable. “Pleasche don’t fire him, okay?”

“I’m not—” Rusty let out an irritated sigh. He held a similar cup of watery cocoa, and was flanked by the original team Venture sans the Action Man. “Look, this whole night has been crazy. I’m not going to fire either of you, okay? It wasn’t even on my mind.”

Across the square from them, the Monarch stood by his wife as she held a rapidfire discussion with Red Death. His face held a very ponderous look as his eyes drifted across the square to meet with Rusty’s for a moment before darting away.

“Way...way more stuff on my mind,” Rusty muttered. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I need you two to get the tower back in condition. All that poltergeist activity probably wreaked havoc with the mainframe, and we’ll need to replace the P.R.O.B.L.E.M. with something.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Billy flapped his left hand as he walked back to White, “conjectural technologies saves your bacon once again, Rustchy Venture.”

He pivoted on a heel and plopped down on a curb next to Pete. “Well, we’re not out just yet.”

Pete’s hands shook and the cocoa hewed dangerously close to the lip of the cup. “Billy. I killed a man.”

Billy looked at him. “Really? When was thisch?”

“Tonight, I just—I ran in here, swinging an ax! I killed Rusty’s dad, Billy—I killed Jonas Venture.”

“Pfft.” Billy rolled his eye. “The Blue Morpho killed Jonas Venture. Twice. You just maimed him.”

“Billy, I put everyone’s lives in danger, I-I screwed up.” White was shaking, he couldn’t seem to stop. “I could have killed everyone.”

Billy squinted concernedly. “It’sch okay, White. We made it out, team Venture-style.”

“This isn’t a Saturday morning cartoon,” White burst out, “and what, do you think you’re a boy adventurer? You’re in your thirties, Billy, it’s time to face facts! That wasn’t fun, that was scary!”

Billy slapped him then. Flesh hand, not the bionic one.

“White.” His words were clipped. “Look. at. me.”

Pete looked in the one eye he hadn't taken with his idiocy.

“I schurvived being shut in a science dome with a homicidal gorilla. We both made it through gladiator gamesch thrown by a psychotic disgruntled henchman. Thisch. is what. we do. We’re not _boy_ adventurers, Pete, we’re _man_ adventurers.”

Billy, so goddamn naive he was believing his own hype. Pete was working up a verbal loogie to hock on his positivity, a toxic little lozenge that would sink him back to zero, but then Rusty came strolling over, Rusty Venture with his father’s blood and other...fluid still on that stupid blue speed suit he’d been wearing since since boyhood, both of them candidates for the cover of arrested development monthly, Rusty put a hand on his shoulder and murmured, “it’s all right, White.”

It wasn’t. Never had been.

_~`~`~`~_

_At the gladiator arena_

In the aftermath of henchman one’s downfall, White milled around in the reunion of heroes, villains, and sidekicks. For once sides were forgotten, everyone sharing the joy of rescue. Through the sea of faces, he caught a glimpse of Shoreleave. The look the S.P.H.I.N.X.agent exchanged with him was...odd. Hard to place. As if he suddenly recognized someone he had known long ago but now was practically strangers with. Shoreleave gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Standing there, clinging to Billy’s hand, White gave the barest nod back.

Inside he still echoed with the phrases, _henching under the villain Pete White...White, you are such a sissy! The villain Pete White...White... sissy!_ Around and around they swirled, like toothpaste spit circling a drain. He wasn’t a sissy. Or a villain. And he certainly wasn’t a sissy villain. Crap, he wasn’t going to let it bother him. He wasn’t even going to _think_ about it after they left.

He returned Billy’s hi-five, his flesh smarting from the bionic hand.

~`~`~`~

_Outside Conjectural Technologies_

Hunter Gathers stalked off, barking orders to ship White back to the Venture compound while they tracked down the Investors. White knew he had to be relieved to be left out of things. Same as last time, he wouldn’t be in any danger, just needed to sweep up the pieces OSI (or _former_ OSI, in this case) deposited on his doorstep. The empty feeling pinching in the vicinity of his stomach was just the indignity of being passed over as a brother of the night. He, a coward, held absolutely no romantic notions of swooping in guns blazing to rescue his business partner.

The S.P.H.I.N.X. agents scattered after Gathers. Shoreleave hung back, snapping the gold laptop shut with a flick of the wrist.

He sidled up to White. “Soooo, they stole your little boyfriend?”

“Leave it alone, pally.”

“Hey, I wasn’t even being mean. Condolences.” Shoreleave looked him up and down. “You going to throw up or something? Looks like you’re gonna puke.”

White held his stomach. Unbidden, the phrase came to him: _you are such a sissy!_

“Not even.” He tried to square his shoulders. “I came to you guys because you’re the reason he’s in this shape in the first place. He wanted to go to MIT!”

“Yeah? And who blew that dream on nose candy?” White flinched. “Ohh, Peter Panic Attack didn’t think I read his dossier? The whole reason we even got our hands on him was because of you. I don’t know why you guys are seeking an arch, Billy’s biggest threat is standing right in front of me.”

_White didn’t take that. Time to show him who the real sissy was. He threw verbal putdown after verbal putdown, slinging acidic insults until the agent was quivering in his little gold shorts…._

White gulped and looked down.

“Can’t. even. deny it.” Shoreleave clapped on each syllable. “Listen, sweetie, the day you’re read to hash things out, mano a mano? Come find me.”

~`~`~`~

_Ventech Tower, post-P.R.O.B.L.E.M_

Lounging on a sofa, White traced his thumb around and around the joystick of their Wii nunchuk. The Wii had fallen into disuse since they had gotten the PS4, but the sensory memory was comforting in his hands.

Their tower room was finally beginning to feel like home, but the ease of home had brought the return of the intrusive thoughts that circled Pete White’s brain in a mocking feedback loop.

_Working under the villain Pete White... The villain Pete White... The villain…._

He’d gone right to the fire ax. Hadn’t even stopped to think about it, just chopped away at Jonas Venture’s remains. Come to think of it, that was what always happened when he tried helping people, he just wound up making it worse somehow.

...like doing the right thing was at complete odds with his gut instinct...

Billy sat watching TV with a bowl of popcorn, salt shaker full of brewer’s yeast at his elbow.

_“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And I'm the gander!”_

Billy cackled, shoveling popcorn into his mouth. “Oh, _Roy_. Hey White, do you think I'm the Roy and you’re the Moss? Or the other way around?”

Pete stared, seeing but not seeing Billy’s cheeks redden with  mirth. Where the hell did they get off calling him a villain? What had he ever done besides help people? He practically lived with the son of the man who drafted the bill of rights for heroes. He chopped Jonas senior because he thought he was a ghost! And sure he got Billy’s eye and hand lost to an angry rottweiler, but it was a mistake! Villains were gimmicky losers who played up their physical deformities and couldn’t take responsibility for their own actions and...he didn’t want to finish that thought. That douche in the gladiator getup was just throwing words around.

And Shoreleave. Where did he get off calling him...White wasn’t a…

“Alscho, who would you peg as our Jen? I vote Ruschty.” Billy turned back and found White’s vacant glare fixated on him. “Whoa, are you trying to scan me?”

White shook himself. “Nah, just...just thinking, is all.”

“Ookay, well could you think a little softer? You’re giving me the creeps.”

White stood up. “Actually, I think...I'm going for a walk.”

“Jeez, I wasn’t scherious. Glare at my back all you want.”

But Pete was already looping his scarf around his neck. “Gotta go stretch my legs. Take some air. I’ll be back soon,” he added, because Billy was beginning to get that look, and he didn’t want Billy to worry. “ _Soon_ , alright?’

White exited the room and went to the elevator. He wasn’t even sure where he was going until he stood before  Dummy corp’s doors.

“Erm, hi,” he said to the robotic secretary.

“Hi there,” she chirped, “what can I get you?”

“I was wondering if….I was looking...can I speak with Shoreleave?”

For a horrible moment he thought he got it wrong. The secretary’s face shut down and she looked almost sullen.

Then she spat out in a robotic meter: “Step-through. Room-2-0-8.”

White could hardly breath as he walked down the metal hall. Door 208 was an army-style bunk room where Shoreleave stood almost bouncing with excitement.

“Oooo-ooo, girlfriend I have been _waiting_ for this since the arena.” he grinned at White like a tiger eyeing a stuck gazelle.

White fidgeted with the fringe of his scarf. “I guess you know why I'm here, don’t you?”

“Oh, completely. My sissy senses were tingling.”

White tossed another bend of scarf around his neck. “Okay, I'm _sorry I_ called you a sissy, alright? I really need your help.”

Pete asked “am I a villain?” at the same time Shoreleave said “you are _so totally_ gay.” They drew away from each other and simultaneously shouted “oh, what?”

“Villain? Why the crap would I know that?”

“Gay? I’m not...why would you think I was gay?”

Shoreleave’s look was mildly pitying. “You want a list? Top of it is ‘living with another man for over ten years’ _hel-looo_.”

“We’re business partners!”

“Business partners who share a bedroom. Look I can prove it: George Michael or Boy George?”

White furrowed his brow. “Umm, George Michael?”

Shoreleave made a buzzer sound. “The hetero answer is: ‘who the hell are they’?”

“Aww, come on, I'm a music guy! Of course I would know who they are.”

“Surrre. And how about that shirt?”

“It _was_ red! Anyway, it’s manly to wear pink nowadays.”

“Not with those leggings, it’s not.” Shoreleave leaned in. “and yes, leg-gings. Tights. Mantyhose.”

“Oh, like you’re going to call me a fashion victim, Mr. Frosted Tips? It’s not 2002 anymore, Lance Bass.”

“Oooh, that one almost left a mark,” Shoreleave said, shaking his fingers as if he’d pinched them in a door. “How about that lovely little parasol, Lady Windermere?”

“I’m an albino,” White said, “I can’t be in the sun.”

“So you chose a _parasol?_ You don’t even cheat and call it an umbrella, it’s a frigging parasol.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do? Wear a big white muumuu and an ice bucket on my head like I'm Marlon Brando?”

“I doubt Marlon got manis on the regular, sweetie.”

“What, this?” White flexed his knuckles, revealing glossy french tips. “I do this myself, it’s easiest for typing.”

“Sure, honey, sure.” Shoreleave was smirking in a very unpleasant fashion. “Deny it all you want, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably likes other ducks.”

White folded his arms. “What, you’re saying I'm in denial?”

“You’re so deep in the closet you’re in Narnia.” Shoreleave threw a towel around his shoulders. “I have to hit the shower, do us all a favor and don’t be here when I come back.”

A bolt of uncertainty struck White, he teetered.

“Wait!”

Shoreleave paused at the door.

“Look, can you...help me with something? I need to see.”

The agent turned slightly back into the room. “I’m listening.”

White closed his hands. “Could I just...kiss you? Just to see if I'm...if it’s...really like that?”

Shoreleave snort-laughed. “Oh boy, I've heard that line before and it always ends up with me on my back with my legs in the air. Sorry, sunshine, I'm done playing fairy godmother to nervous straight boys.”

“Please!” White hadn’t meant to shout, but he found himself halfway across the room with his fists clenched so hard it hurt. “If it’ll settle things.”

Shoreleave gave him a long, appraising look. “Fine,” he admitted, dropping the towel.

There was nothing tender about it. White just sidled up to Shoreleave’s muscular, tall form and touched lips with him. It was...awkward was probably the kindest thing you could say about it. White and Shoreleave parted, grimacing.

“Ah, nevermind, sweetie. The ladies can keep you.” Shoreleave picked up his towel.

“Wait.” Pete was looking down in concentration “...can you get on your knees?”

Shoreleave gave him a sharp look. “Are you kidding?”

“Or—wait, sit down on the bed.”

Bemused and amused, Shoreleave finally complied, bringing him head-height with White’s chest. White bent down, covering his mustache with a finger.

“What—”

White kissed him, and this time it was different. Very, very different. White felt a knot form in his stomach, a strange, comfortable ache that he had felt only seldomly, and never this strong. The height difference, the vulnerable flutter of breath—

When they parted this time, Shoreleave had a slightly shocked look.

White looked down. “I guess this means...you won. What do you think?”

“I think I owe Brock five bucks.”

White squinted. “What? Why?”

“I bet you’d be a crappy kisser.” Shoreleave smirked.

“Wait, why would Brock—how does Brock know—”

“Slow your roll there, don’t shoot the messenger.” Shoreleave retrieved his towel. “You’ll probably be angry for a bit. I was angry when I came out. All those years I lost, doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason. It might hurt. Hurt a lot. But you’re free.”

“Oh I'm free?” White could feel the old poison trickle in. “oh thanks, mighty wizard, I guess I had the way to go back to Kansas all along.”

“Oh don’t _even_ with me honey, I know all about hiding your vulnerability with sarcasm, I _invented_ it.” Shoreleave waved his hand as if displacing a stink. “”You’ve got more than most, if you think about it. You have people around you who won’t react with physical violence when you come out, you live in a pretty tolerant city, you don’t even have to go out looking for someone you want to spend your life with. That’s like winning the lottery and surviving a lightning strike at the same time. Own it. Live with it. And for god's sake get some pants,” he added as the doors shut after him.


	3. See What's Become of Me

_VenTech Tower_

White lounged on the couch in a twilight state of half-sleep. A running background track of John Hughes movies lulled him through the fever and aches, and he spent the day in a dreamless stupor. His peace was broken by the front door slamming and Billy calling “I'm hooo-ooome!”

He strolled into the living room with a paper bag under his arm. “Ugh, Schixteen Candles, White? Really?”

White cleared his throat painfully. “80’s movies are my comfort food, Billy, you know that.”

“Yeah, but you have to pick the girliest movie? Not even Breakfascht Club or Ferrisch Bueller?”

White groaned and held his head. “Not right now, Billy, I feel like Courtney Love on a monday.”

“Sor-ry, I forgot your delicate condition. Who the hell catches mono outside of scheventh grade, anyway?”

White coughed and hunched lower into his blankets, hiding the flush of his cheeks. He knew exactly who got mono outside of seventh grade, because he had spent their entire phone call bitching about it (“and how do you think I feel? I had to tell Al I got it from sharing silverware!”)

Billy came into view, stripping off his outer coat to reveal he wore nothing more than tighty-whities. Pete did a double-take.

“Billy, there’s a six-foot blizzard outside, the hell are you doing?”

“It’s the thermal regulator. I’m schweating like Marlon Brando in a muumuu here.” Billy reached into the paper bag and extracted his balled-up clothes, then began retrieving items and listing them out one by one. “Variety pack for schurviving mono. One campbell's chicken soup, can of. One condensed orange juice, can of. One change of pyjama pantsch, albino size. Tissuesch, box of. Sucrets, tin of. And finally, one thermal regulator.”

White blinked blearily. “Wha...”

Billy pulled the covers aside and began crawling up behind him. White squirmed. “H-hey, pally, what do you think you’re doing?”

“C’mon, I'm like a hot water bottle right now.”

“B-but...” White’s face was incandescent with embarrassment.

Billy settled along the curve of his spine, resting his sharp little chin on White’s shoulder. “There. As long as we don’t schwap schaliva, you’re not contagiousch.”

White squirmed a bit, trying to make it so their pelvises weren’t touching. This would have been weird on any given day, but coming fresh off the heels of some...interesting revelations, his face blazed with mortification.

Billy held a hand to his forehead. “Man, you’re feverish. Want me to draw a bath?”

_“Draw_ a bath? No thanks, Mister Belvedere. I just want to lay down and forget I'm alive for a while.”

“Aw, c’mon, I'm a doctor, there muscht be something I can do.” Billy dropped his hand and hummed lightly. _“Husch little baby, don’t say a word..”_

White burst into a laugh that made his lymph nodes ache. “You gotta be kidding me! Don’t sing your mom’s song, Billy, that’s creepy.”

“Fine.” Billy’s voice took on a more soothing cast. _“...you wanted to dance, scho I asked you to dance, but the fear was in my eyesch. Schome may call it a one night schtand, but we can call it paradise...”_

White closed his eyes, trying not to feel anything but tired and sore. Despite the speech impediment, Billy’s voice was soft and achingly sincere and hit White in a place he wasn’t ready to admit he liked. It wasn’t appropriate for business partners to share a bed, Shoreleave had a point, but he felt so absolutely like shit his cowardice dictated that he lie there like a damp sponge while Billy crooned Duran Duran in his ear.

_“Don’t say a prayer for me now, save it for the morning after. No, don’t say a prayer for me now, save it till the morning after…”_

White drifted away with a bionic arm draped over his middle.

~`~`~`~

_In a desert trailer_

Though their friendship took the shape of aimless bickering, that did not mean they never truly fought. Besides their tiff after the dogfighting mishap they have had one knock-down, drag-out fight. It had been about White’s tendency to leave empty cereal boxes out.. in the same way that World War II was started by the number of telegraph poles in Germany.

“And that’s what killsch me, is you know how to clean up, you juscht—you juscht don’t!” Billy pointed a finger vibrating with anger at White. His speech impediment, which got worse when he was upset or excited, was so thick he showered White with saliva. “You juscht think _‘I'll let Billy clean up, I'll let Billy do all the footwork, I'm the idea man!’_ Name one succeschful idea you’ve had in the last six months, White. _One!_ ”

“At least _someone_ has ideas around here! What, you think buying Rusty Venture merch is cheap? We’d have no income if we followed your business plan! I do the footwork, I broker the deals, I do plenty!” It was a continual sticking point with him that he constantly had to re-prove his worth every time someone got upset over his laid-back attitude towards menial labor. Recognizing and organizing talent was in itself a talent, why didn’t anyone see that? White wasn’t worthless, White was…

White was...

“Yeah, all the schowy stuff, leaving the grunt work to me! I feel like a houschewife!”

“Well, err, you _are_ in a frilly apron, Billy.”

Billy’s face turned a red so deep it was nearly purple.

“FUCK! YOU!” He spat, hurling the cereal box at White. It bounced off the forearms White had thrown up to shield his head. The balled-up apron followed.

Billy stomped to the trailer door and threw it open.

“ _Ohhh_ , where ya goin’?” White jumped to his feet.

“Why would you care?” Billy hissed with such blistering cold it froze White’s feet in place. He could only stand helplessly as Billy stomped out to the conjecture cycle and fired it up. The little guy had a short fuse with a big bang. Best left alone, so he could cool down.

White sat. No TV on, no Wii sports, no 80’s movies to calm the blizzard flurry inside him. He just needed to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

He lost the will to do anything but sit the longer he sat there, and the longer he sat there the less he wanted to move. It was okay, because Billy would be back soon, he wasn’t about to go off on another OSI endeavor. White glanced at the clock. Had it really been three hours already? The light was no different. Maybe the clock was wrong, forgot to put batteries in it. He was sure Billy would scold him over it when he came back, any minute now. He couldn’t be that mad, he’d only been gone for—he checked the clock—five hours? Christ, he hadn’t been sitting here that long, it didn’t feel like it anyway. This wasn’t like the last time, when he’d parked his moped by the Billboard and just sat there, parked his trailer by the Billboard and just sat there for days and days and days and it had felt like nothing at all and simultaneously forever and he looked up at the clock and it had been nine hours, was the light different outside? Maybe Billy wasn’t coming back. It was getting dark and time was flowing oddly, he just needed something to make it familiar again and suddenly there was a baggie of coke in front of him, had he stashed it in the empty cereal box? Suddenly the powder was spread out on the picture of that Halloween when they’d dressed up as Doc Brown and Marty McFly and he was cutting lines as he hummed _Hazy Shade of Winter_ and the trailer door creaked open, throwing light on him so he winced and retreated like a salted snail, Billy was back and it was too bright outside, was it the next day already? Billy was back and checking beneath his eyelids and calling his name like he was a stroke victim.

“Mmm.” White blinked hard. “What you say?”

“I schaid have you really been sitting here this whole time?” Billy noticed the neat lines of powder. “Isch that coke? You told me you schtopped.”

“Umm, I _did_.” White looked at Billy. The gulf of unspoken words yawned between them.

Billy furrowed his brow. “...are you going to do it now?”

White looked down. “Erm, no?”

“So you want me to do it?”

“God, no!” Feverishly, he swept the cocaine back into the baggie. Swept everything back into hiding. After that there was no apology, no drawn-out talk of feelings and duties and equality, just them sitting together on the pullout and watching _Night Shift_ and cackling at Henry Winkler, the surface of their relationship swept so smooth you would never have thought anything had been wrong. The next day White continued to joke about Billy’s dependence on him because it was so close to the truth it scared him deep, how quickly White had fallen without him again.

~`~`~`~

_Venture compound, panic room_

“I’d always thought of Rusty as my best friend,” White admitted in the horrible sterility of the room that now doubled as a storage space for all the Venture’s off-holiday decorations.

“White, you’re a starfucker.” Hatred used one plump finger to stab at him. “You have the greatest friend in the world, and because he’s not famous, you don’t care. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Hatred rolled away from him. That stung. It shouldn’t have stung. White found himself fumbling in defense, when he really didn’t need to dignify it at all.

“Rusty and I went to school together, we were inseparable!” Which was true...kinda. He wanted it to be true.

“Starfucker!”

White let his head fall back on the grainy camping pillow. “Like you’re one to talk. You’re all _‘ooh, Rusty this, Rusty that!’_ You started as his arch, you’re not fooling anyone.”

“Yeah, I arched him and _then I_ got reassigned as a bodyguard. You say Rusty’s your best friend? I don’t see you here at three in the morning holding a puke bucket when the doc’s black market meds clash with his doctails. I’m the emotional husband, you’re just a booty call.”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm a jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place.” White flapped his hand at Hatred and rolled to his side, so they lay facing away from each other. He couldn’t look at the man anymore, and not just because of the horrible after-image of his oozing bunions.

“I bring something more to his life than I take away. I don’t think anyone could say the same with you and Billy.”

“What the hell do you mean, I do everything for him!”

“You take. You’re a taker.”

“That’ not how it is. That’s not at all how it is!”

~`~`~`~

_State University_

This was how it was: blacklight posters covering every available wall that clashed so neatly with the burnt orange shag carpet. The sting of kneeling too long on a hard floor. Deep Purple jacked up loud enough that the other dorm rooms wouldn’t overhear Rusty’s raccoon chirps of sexual excitement.

Pete busied himself on his knees, a hand twisted into the ivory strands of his hair. He wondered what Rusty thought about when they did this, who he thought about. Certainly not the albino in front of him.

Pete was still struggling with the fact that anyone would want to sleep with him, even as proxy for something better. Even before puberty had set in with its pustules and perspiration and the braces jailing his teeth, no one had wanted to touch Pete White. And the fact that Rusty Venture, former boy adventurer, was the one asking? Well, Pete just kind of fell into it.

Rusty let out a groan. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhlindsaywagner!” he clenched his fingers in Pete’s hair, squeezed once, and then released.

Pete let his head dip low and wiped his mouth. He still wasn’t sure if he enjoyed this.

He looked up and found Rusty looking at him oddly. The single bare bulb they had left lit threw golden light over Pete, making his hair look blond instead of ghost-white.

“Alright, Rust?”

Rusty seemed to snap out of it. “Oh yeah, yeah, man. Thanks.” he pulled up his zipper. “I owe ya one.”

His gaze drifted over to his jacket draped over White’s desk, and things clicked neatly back into place. White was no longer needed for the moment, which always sent him spinning into a void.

“Hey Rust,” he said with forced casualness, wincing as he got to his feet, “D&D Thursday? Underbheit says he can get his hands on some Mary Jane.”

“Can’t. My stupid lit class.” Rusty smoothed a greasy strand of hair behind his ears.He looked like he had to work very hard to remember Pete White even existed, something White was too used to and didn’t want to be used to anymore.

“Come oooooon,” he wheedled, “it’ll be a gas. Besides, we can’t get a proper game going with just three.”

“Sure you can. Soriyama’s DM-ing this week, he’d probably run the whole game himself if he could.”

Very, very early on, White had learned one reprieve from the taunting and teasing of his childhood: if you aimed the ridicule at another source, you were temporarily out of firing line.

“What if we get some oregano and tell Mikey it’s the good shit,” he asked, voice low.

Rusty snort-laughed. “Oh my god, I _have_ to see that. Count me in.”

White smiled, heart thumping in relief. He had bought Rusty Venture’s attention, even if it was only momentary.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech tower_

In a chaise lounge by the pool, Rusty sat with earbuds in his ears, singing obnoxiously along with his current roster of showtunes.

_“Your swag-ger and your bear-ing, and the just-right clothes you’re wear-ing—”_

Billy snapped his fingers. “Ruschty! I need you to sign off on this, I've been aschking for ten minutes now!

_“Your keys, oh-hh-h, your ring! Of! Keys!”_

“Sign it, for the love of crap!”

Humming, Rusty dashed off a scrawl that held a bare resemblance to actual letters.

“Thank you, _god!”_ Billy threw his hands up in the air and stalked off. Pete watched him from behind the fence of his pink sunglasses, from the safety of the pool umbrella that blocked the sun from the patio. He had a doctail clasped in one hand (Hawaiian punch and Midori, actually not that terrible) that he sipped whenever he didn’t know what to do with his mouth. He sipped it now, running the pink of his tongue over his lips. Billy’s reflection doubled in his sunglasses, his short-tempered pace and the hunch of his shoulders in his lab coat.

_“It was like a 1950’s lesbian pulp novel,”_ Rusty intoned, swishing his doctail in the glass. _“Their tawdry love could only flourish in the shadows.”_

White started. “What?”

Rusty smirked knowingly and downed his drink, something garnished with a sour apple twizzler. He plucked a single earbud out as concession to White.  “So, how are things in R&D these days?”

“Oh, you know...thinging.” he really, really didn’t like the smirk on Rusty’s face, he didn’t want to guess what it meant. “Working on the teleporter, same old song and dance.”

“I just feel bad that you’re left here working late every time Billy goes to visit his mom and the Apple Dumbass gang.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” White waved his hand. “They keep asking me where we registered for china. _China_. My great aunt had china, that kind with the blue patterning? I don’t know why anyone below ninety would want it, no one ever eats off china but drop one and you’ve just started World War III.”

“Ah-huh.” Rusty was still smirking. “So no china? What else are you registered for? Saw a waffle maker at the sharper image, it could double as your Christmas bonus.”

“Cut it out, Rust, this is getting annoying. It’s like they think we’re...together.”

Rusty glanced over his shades. “And you’re not together?”

White damned all available gods that his skin made any blush immediately and vividly apparent. “Not...they think we’re _together_ together, Rust.”

“And?”

“It’s not funny!”

“Of course it isn’t,” Rusty said, still smirking.

“They keep treating us like we’re this adorable little couple.”

“Oh _no_.”

“Colonel Gentleman told me the other day, _‘you hold onto that boy, albino, you’re not going to get much better this late in life.’”_

“Oh you poor dear.”

“Stop smiling!”

Rusty hid his smirk behind his glass.

White growled and gulped his doctail, letting the buzz mellow out the knots in his back. God, wasn’t this just college all over again?

The two men stared deep into the pool.

“...so, you still into redheads?” Rusty asked absently.

White glanced at him. “What?”

Rusty snickered and shook his head.

White felt the blush coming back and tried to will it away. “Look, a little experimentation in college does not an orientation make. I’m not...we’re not…”

Rusty sighed. “Look, I _get_ it, okay? Attraction to your second just happens. Someone’s duty bound to support you in every way, it gets on you. You start to count on them being there every day, in all the ways everyone else in your life wasn’t before, and suddenly you start to notice the Olympian physique and flaxen hair and you start thinking if things were a little different—”

“We all know what you had with Myra,” White said drily.

Rusty started. “Myra? Oh yes, Myra. Of course. Anyway, what I'm saying is, if you have that invaluable connection with someone, don’t let anyone make you feel stupid about it, okay? Even if you can never admit it in a thousand goddamn years it’s still—it’s still something.” Rusty was impassioned, slurring his speech. He was in the blurting-out-secrets stage of drunkenness, which was usually good for entertainment. But White wanted nothing more than to abandon this conversation and never pick it up again.

The snap of the sliding glass door came like a bolt of merciful lightning. “Hey Doc, that pirate guy is asking about a hashtag trend you apparently started?” Brock’s monolithic shadow fell over them.

Rusty snorted. “Look, I just wanted to get people interested in our new thorax exercise machine!”

“You called it #thrax. As in anthrax. What did you think would happen?”

“Every one knows you’re supposed to abbreviate hashtags.”

“No. No you’re not.”

White clumsily excused himself back to the penthouse and the elevator back to R&D. His last glimpse of the patio was the statuesque blond bent like a mother hen over his drunk boss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon Rusty as loving Fun Home so damn much. The struggles with sexuality, the overbearing perfectionist father, he feels it. The phrase "what do you know that's not your dad's mythology" hits home.


	4. I Think We're Alone Now

_VenTech Tower_

The first week in R&D had been nothing but pure joy. Rusty was tapping his foot for results, but it was all too easy to put him off with _‘we’re categorizing everything, learning the filing system, etc.’_ They played Segway basketball and ate microwave burritos. For a while, White had the luxury of not thinking in terms of ‘future’ and ‘money’ and just lived it up with Billy. And times were so damn good he didn’t go to bed thinking in terms of ‘villain’ and ‘hero.’

And then...the god gas.

He’d run, of course. His cowardly instincts acted once more to save his life. But Billy had never acted on his self-preservation instincts, not once in his damn life. Billy had fallen into the clutches of yet another Rusty arch and Pete had run. When he crept back after the excitement was over, Billy was babbling about Rusty Venture and the Blue Morpho as White schlepped him back to the lab. Panic set in then. What the hell did he do? What first aid did you provide for mind control gas? He tried to get food in Billy, but Billy slapped the burger away and then changed his mind and ate it off the floor. Pete filmed the results to show Billy later, ire burning in his chest. Billy never listened, never goddamn listened, maybe hard evidence would finally cut down on his optimism.

Rusty came back in, doffing his overcoat. “Brock’s just gone, I lost him and then got waylaid by jackassery. How is he?”

White gestured helplessly to where Billy picked shredded lettuce off the bun.

“Oh that is _sad._ That is Old Yeller sad. Why don’t you...I don’t know, do something?” Rusty flapped his hand.

Not for the first time, White felt irritation towards Rusty’s flippant attitude build in his chest. “What do you want me to do, boil water and rip up some sheets? He’s been gassed by an experimental compound. I don’t know what the hell to do, I'm not a nurse.”

Rusty considered Billy, fingering his goatee. “Maybe we should just let his mom take care of him, she’ll probably be thrilled to have her baby boy back for a night.”

“Hey, show a little respect pally.” White prodded him with his index finger. “He went to bat for you.”

“So do you have an alternative then?”

Both men stared off into space, grimacing.

“I’ll call a cab.”

“Fine. Meet you downstairs.” White unfurled one of the fire blankets and wrapped Billy up in it, carrying him bridal-style to the elevator.

“Heyy,” Billy slurred, even harder to understand, “I schaw Rusty Venture kick that Haranguguy’s asch.”

White hit the button with his elbow. “Hang in there, pally. We’ll get you to your ma.”

Billy made a noise like a distressed goose. “My mom? I don’t live at home anymore, I'm Billy Quizboy, adventurer, and I want to be juscht like Rusty Venture.”

“Better start shaving your head then,” White said drily. They rode down to the lobby in near-silence. Then Billy sighed and nestled his sizable head in the crook of White’s neck, making White tilt his head at an extreme angle. He shot a dirty look at Rusty’s smirk and slid into the cab without thanking him.

For a while there was only the sound of the cab moving through the city and the light and shadows sliding past his face. Then White looked down and found Billy’s red-eyed gaze locked on him in a manner he hesitated to label as ‘worshipful.’

“White,” he whispered, “do you you know _the_ Rusty Venture?”

“Of course I do, pally. You do too.” he tried not to be exasperated with the little guy.

Billy squinted. “You are scho cool, you know that? You’re like the coolescht guy I know.”

“Great.” White peered out the windshield.

“Also handschomenen—handschominesch—good looking. Bescht lookin guy I know.”

White ignored the little flip of his stomach. “What’s our ETA? He asked, and was promptly ignored by the cabbie.

He jumped a little at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. It was Billy, looking up at him in awe.

“Hey,” he said, “you wanna hang out schometime? Get schome pizza or something?”

White had to remind himself not to laugh. He could laugh later, when he didn’t have the weight of a grown man spread across his lap. “Sure. Why not.”

“Cool.” Billy’s hand wandered down White’s arm in a slightly intimate manner.

White shifted, suddenly very politely uncomfortable. He crossed his legs with great difficulty.

“Hey pally?”

Billy was smiling up at him, worshipful. God gas, god gas, White repeated in a panic loop. Billy did not look like—he did not want—

Horace Gentleman yanked open the cab door. “Good god, boys, save it for the honeymoon suite.”

White’s cheeks burned with humiliation as he foisted Billy off to his mother and made repeated attempts to clear his name, finally putting the video of Billy up on youtube to prove how little he cared. Because, as he had known since childhood, if he could aim the humiliation at someone else he would be spared.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech tower, a later day_

“Hellooo? I require a word.” St. Cloud’s bizarrely nonchalant monotone drifted through the doorway. White immediately dropped a sheet over a telepod and stood to attention, crossing his arms and glaring.

“I got nothin’ to say to you, St. Cloud. You have no business bein’ in here, you sold us to VenTech.”

“As a shareholder for VenTech industries, I am allowed a tour of the facilities.” St. Cloud produced one slug-white hand. “Pei Wie? Hankie.”

Pete’s fellow albino, today clad in a ridiculous costume that bore an unfortunate resemblance to Morris Day’s zoot suit proffered a lace-edged handkerchief monoggrammed with the artist formerly known as Prince’s symbol. St. Cloud pretended to sneeze elaborately, and then dropped it on the floor.

“I come with a peace offering.” St. Cloud gestured, and Pei Wie opened up a small suitcase brimming with cash. “For your emotional hardship from the move.”

White’s adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He had a feeling Billy would go atomic if he so much as touched the money. “We’ve...been settling in, it’s really no trouble.”

“Ah, is that a _we_ I heard?” St. Cloud touched a finger to his ear. “This offer extends to you and you alone.”

For one traitorous moment, Pete’s inner eye converted the dollars to their weight in white powder. He licked his lips.

“Hey, what’s the deal here? I’m not for sale, St. Cloud.”

“Nonsense. How it would tickle me to see Whalen’s albino bought out from under him.”

“I’m not _his_ albino, I'm his business partner.” White held onto the anger, it helped him keep focus. “And even if I was, there’s no way I go with you and be made to wear little hot pants or something creepy like that!”

“Funny. I would have thought you’d jump at the opportunity to cause more chaos in his life.”

Blood drained from White’s face, leaving it quite pale indeed. “What...what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that you have the makings of a great villain, Peter White.” St. Cloud made a fist. “You do not yet realize your importance. You've only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training! With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring order to the galaxy.

“I’ll never join you!” White snapped. “Your Sith nonsense won’t convince me any more than that briefcase of cash!”

“White, why are you yelling at our investor?” Rusty strode into the room. “I’m so sorry, mister St. Cloud, our R&D program isn’t really the public face of the company. Now I'd like to draw your attention over here…” he escorted St. Cloud away, leaving the albinos alone.

White and Pei Wie exchanged an awkward look. Pei Wie made a fist and then drew circles clockwise around his chest. Pete wiped his fingers across his forehead so that he formed a thumbs up.

Pei Wie started. _You sign?_ He signed.

White gestured, _some. I majored in communication in school. Switched to CompSci after a semester._

Pei Wie waited while that long and awkward-to-phrase sentence finished. _So how did you come to be sidekick?_

_Sidekick?_ White gestured fumingly. _Side-nothing! We’re partners._

Pei Wie waved after St. Cloud. _He doesn’t believe you._

_Of course he doesn’t. He thinks everyone can just be bought._

_But he bought you._

_He bought a_ **_company_ ** _, not a person._ White thumbed at himself. _It’s not just about the money._

_So you like arching masty Billy then?i_

White’s face fell. _I don’t arch Billy, we’re friends._

_Really? St. Cloud does not think so. You thwart Billy at every turn._

White’s arms went limp at his sides. As much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn’t muster up any energy to continue.

St. Cloud returned, with Rusty trailing  like a needy storm cloud. “That will be all for today. I assume you have mulled over my offer, Peter?”

Pete said nothing. He didn’t know where to look.

“Ah. Well I must run for now, having a meeting with the guild in a few. Pei Wie, would you do the honors?”

Pei Wie retrieved a fat stack of green from the suitcase and set it on a nearby console.

“That would buy a good amount of booger sugar, I would hope.” St. Cloud sniffed. “Come Pei Wie. We must abscond.”

~`~`~`~

_VenTech Tower, later_

White sat on the sofa of their shared room. In front of him was a glass of Grey Goose he’d been storing in the freezer. Fighting the VenTech tower’s impeccable climate control, the glass sweated. White watched a bead slide down the clear side of the glass and swallowed. Beside the glass was an unmarked plain envelope, sitting with all the unassuming menace of a bomb.

“Urgh, White, you will not believe what happened to—” Billy stepped into the room, coat hanging from one arm. “What’s thisch?”

White nodded at the envelope. “My gift to you.”

Billy rolled his eye. “I told you, I don’t want a gift certificate for Olive Garden. My _mom_ likes eating there, I just like the breadschticks.”

White stayed silent behind his tented fingers.

Billy ripped the envelope open by sliding his finger through the crease. He held the paper up to his face and his forehead creased.

“What the hell is thisch?” he asked, dropping the paper.

“My resignation. And my severance pay. I’m giving it to you and expecting nothing in return.”

Billy shook his head. “I am not going back to being the breadwinner, White.”

“No, I'm...I'm going. You can have all my money, and I won’t be putting you in anymore danger.” White couldn’t make himself stand.

Billy looked at him. Just looked at him. A funny half-laugh formed in his throat.

“White,” he said, “White did you get something cut with fentanyl? You’re coming down now, don’t be scared.”

“I’m not high, Billy.”

“Yeah you are.”

“Billy—”

“You are so damn high you’re hallucinating. What—what—what brought this on?” Billy began pacing. “We just finished a teleporter, White! A non-Brundlefly teleporter! We’re fixed for life! Why in the hell are you getting cold feet now of all times!”

“That’s just it, Billy,” Pete said, lowering his hands. “We can write our own checks. I wrote mine.”

“You can’t. You can’t just—what the hell is up your asch, anyway? Do you want your name above mine on the patent? Huh? Is that why you’re throwing a diva tantrum?”

“I don’t want anything. I’m doing something for you, and not for me. In fact this kinda hurts me a little. A lot. Hurts a lot. Hope that makes it count.”

“White, you are talking crazy.” Billy swept the envelope and its contents to the floor. “Here I was planning a karaoke jam to end all karaoke jams, and you’re in here trying to schplit us up. We’re Conject-Tech, White! Us freaks have to stick together.”

“Billy, you can’t make your head smaller with makeup.” White said hollowly. He stood up. His legs didn’t want him to. “I’ll just go and...I dunno, find another gig. I hear social media influencer is pretty big these days. I’ll spend my days doing yoga in a fake tan, sounds about right.”

“White.”

“Pretending to have a life is all I do anyway.”

“White.”

“That and take. I’m a taker, Billy, it’s all I do.”

“White, what the hell brought this on?” Billy was prodding at White, fencing him back with his mechanical hand. He would never just let it go, he could never just let anything go—for one damn time, Billy, act to save yourself and take the coward’s way out.

“What brought this on? What brought this on is that we’re two men—not teenagers, fully grown men—who spend our Fridays watching the Bravo network and playing jenga. It’s-it’s sad, Billy.” he could feel the old brand of poison trickle in, he had to vomit it out, there was no stopping it anymore. “You got a contact high from being in Rusty Venture’s dust wake, but I just can’t do that anymore.”

Billy was glaring at him, oh crap, Billy saw right through him, didn't he?

“We sold our company over a rubber ball,” he blurted, charging forward so he didn’t have to look at Billy. “A _rubber ball,_ Billy. Even I think that’s crossing a line, and I had a robot Duke of Hazzard. Also, _hello,_ I had a robot Duke of Hazzard. I need to grow up, Billy, I need to—I have to go.”

Billy looked at him, arms crossed, foot tapping, face stern.

“Fine,” he said crisply, “do it, then.”

White wobbled. There was a ringing in his ears. “R-really?”

“Go. You’ve obviously planned this. I can’t stop you, can I? You’ve made up your mind.”

White stood in place. “Don’t try to convince me, now.”

“I’m not. You’re going. So go.”

White didn’t move.

“You can take the hot plate and the rice cooker, my mom’s springing for one of those newfangled pressure cookers that does all that. Also, the _Prisoner_ box set is all yours, I schtill have the VHS.”

White didn’t move.

“I’ll schee about your mattress, I'm schure there’s some schecurity or schomeone to held schqueeze it in the elevator.”

White didn’t move.

Billy opened his arms. “Schee? That’s it, White, you don’t leave, you never leave.”

White wobbled on his feet. “I should.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Reasons.” his head hurt. He wished he hadn’t drank. He really wished for a neat little pile of coke, coke always helped him feel like a genius. Right now he felt like his brain was losing power every second.

“What reasons? Give me an example.”

White put his face in his hands.

“White.” Billy sighed. “...come sit down.”

He didn’t want to sit, but his body moved automatically to obey and he plopped his butt down on the sofa. A quick glance made him realize that he and Billy were now more or less face to face. His heart quickened.

Billy was examining him with a critical eye, checking his pulse and pupils. Still so concerned about White, despite him squirming away at every opportunity. “Well, I don’t think it’s pills, or whatever that kid by the living statue is peddling. But you must’ve got into something, I mean what could have cause—”

In what was probably a very terrible idea, White grabbed Billy and kissed him. He didn’t mean to grab him so hard, but he had been afraid and now that he had Billy in a liplock he was downright terrified. Billy, pressed in an awkward half-stance against White’s chest, gave an aggressive _mmph_ against White’s open mouth. White reluctantly let go.

“White! What the crap?” Billy wrung his bionic hand with his flesh hand. “The hell is that all about? You think you can just kiss me to shut me up?”

“Um, er, no. it’s was supposed to be n-nice.” White couldn’t look at him anymore.

“Oh what, it’s nice to kiss me right after you tried to desert me? Don’t think you’re off the hook, mister.”

White realized that Billy was actually more upset about the argument than the kiss. The little hope that gave him deflated under the crushing weight of his despair.

“Look, Billy, I just...we can’t continue like this. Hanging out and karaoke and adventuring—”

“Schays who? Huh, White? Schays who? God, I just _can’t_ with you right now.” It was Billy’s turn to pace. “You’re blowing hot and cold faster than that broken air unit we left in the trailer. I have a million and one things to think about right now, and you have to pitch a scene and pretend to leave?”

White looked down at the floor, wishing his sidesweep covered his entire forehead so it shielded him from Billy’s gaze. “...so you never believed I was leaving?”

“White. I know you. You could never do it in perschon, you would’ve left a note.” Billy stopped pacing and shook his head. “You finally decide you like me and immediately go into flee mode? What the actual hell? Did you think I didn’t like you back? What the hell do you think I've been doing the pascht 20 years?”

White mumbled something.

“Well?”

“I’m bad for you,’ White muttered, “I'm...I'm like the white stuff, Billy. I might make you feel good, and it seems like I make things better but actually I just make everything worse.”

Billy sighed and swept White’s hair to the side. Then, to White’s shock, kissed him in the forehead.

“I know,” he said, “but you’re not a bad hangover.”

Billy turned to their bedroom area, shedding his outer wear and shoes. White remained on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am genuinely unsure of how to spell Pei Wie's name. It says one thing on this website, another on the wiki. I defaulted to the wiki because it seemed the better choice, idk.


	5. Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm

_ Conjectural Technologies _

Billy dropped the small day-bag S.P.H.I.N.X. had given him and glared into the trailer. White had woken up at the idle of Brock’s car outside, but remained splayed on the trailer’s couch in a state of disarray.

“Erm, hi.” He slid his feet to the floor and sat up. 

Billy glared.

“...so are you a vampire now? Cause I know some good sunblock.” White was babbling just to fill up the emptiness, because things had come very close to changing permanently and he was still suffering aftershocks..

Billy sighed. His forehead relaxed, making worry lines disappear. He kicked the day bag through the doorway and stepped in.

“They weren’t vampires, White….alscho I need to get teschted. For, like, all the VD.”

White couldn’t relax. “You okay? They...they hurt you or anything like that?”

“Nah, Monstroso’s alright. Had a schweet place, go-kartsch and everything. Alscho, I'm a full-on doctor now.” Billy’s voice dimmed  as he walked down the trailer’s single hall.

“Aw, Billy that’s great!” White felt cold and numb, but he was an expert at faking happiness for other people. 

“Yeah, no more pseudonyms from 80’s TV,” Billy called from the bathroom, “but on the downside my diplomas have blood on them. Gotta find a way to get that off.”

“What about the boys in gold, they treat you alright?”  _ Did they erase anything _ , White didn’t ask.

“Yeah, Brock saw to it I wasch okay.” The flimsy sheet-metal door slid open. Billy had rolled up his shirtsleeves, and soapy water had splashed onto his collar and stomach. “Was worried they’d try to give me the MK-ULTRA treatment, but Hunter schaid they need me for Monstroso’s recovery period. Guess I'm good for now.”

“That’s...good.” words were failing him right now, as they always did in the really important times. He wanted to tell Billy about the horrible lurching feeling he’d felt upon waking up in the Venture panic room and realizing he had no way of knowing if Billy was even alive or dead.

Instead he said, “glad you’re not a vampire.”

Billy patted his cheeks with a towel and narrowed his eye. “Uh-huh?”

“‘Cause we all know who you’d target right off the bat.” White pointed double-thumbs at himself. “Bingo.”

Billy snorted. “Yeah right. There’s a looooong lischt of people who I'd bite before you, starting with Claudia Schiffer and ending with Pee-wee Herman.”

“Paul Reubens? Why the hell would you drag him into this?”

“He was the best thing about the 1992 Buffy movie and you know it.” Billy seemed about to hang the towel up on a nearby chair back but changed his mind and just let it drop. He shed his doctor’s coat, finally, leaving him good old Billy Quizboy.

“Brock schaid you were really worried about me,” he said.

White flushed. “Well, erm, uh, yeah, uh, yep, guess I was. It was pretty scary when you disappeared.”

“Dude. It wasch terrifying.” Billy illustrated with his hands. “Monstroso’s all right, but those guys? Scary beyond all reason. They can phase through solid matter.”

White kicked himself, mentally. “Crap, I'm sorry I accepted their checks, okay?” 

“Oh that’s not all. You remember when Rusty had that diva fit and almost went full supervillain on us? Remember that skull-face guy who was acting as his Emperor Palpatine?”

A horrible familiar feeling raised the hairs on White’s neck. “Wait, that Killmonger guy?”

“Killinger. And yeah, I think they know each other, same damn pinstripes, same damn reality-defying powers.” Billy shook his arms out. “I got a bad case of the jeeblies, even now.” He threw up his hands. “I’m making myself a bowl of Captain Crunch.”

White sat up and scooted with his heels. “You think you would’ve been safe if they gave you the old brain-wipe?”

“What, like when I left you in the desert?”

White felt his heart beat out of turn for a second. He said nothing, safest option.

Billy came out of the kitchen nook, bowl in his artificial hand, chewing while he squinted like Clint Eastwood.

“Yeah. I remember, White. Came back to me a while ago.”

“Oh.” White didn’t know how to respond. “And you’re not...angry?”

“Oh, raging, but I got the deja vu that thisch happened before and you just had me wiped again. I’m not an idiot, White.”

White looked down. He couldn’t exactly plead innocence on that.

“Look Brock told me—”

“Ah ah ah,” Billy held up a hand. “I know it was their fault, but you acted like their schtooge. That’s what I'm hurt about, White. And then you go and scheek them out again—”

“You got vanished by a bunch of draculas, what the hell did you want me to do?”

“I was fine!”

“I didn’t know that! Literally every other time you got taken from me, it was something horrible. Remember Phantom Limb? Excuse me for having perfectly realistic expectations!”

Billy chewed, rolling the cereal mush on his tongue. 

“Taken  _ from  _ you?” he asked.

White realized he had accidentally said too much, much too much, and scrambled.

“YouknowwhatImean. Anyway, every time I ask if they’re going to blank me, they say I'm not important enough to warrant a go in the brain-washer. Count yourself lucky you’re important enough to wipe.”

“Oh yeah, I feel like Charlie Bucket with a Wonka bar.” Billy took another huge bite. Milk slopped down his chin and he swiped his upper arm across his mouth to blot it. “Scho where were you while I was performing open-heart surgery on a guy big enough to use my head like a basketball?”

“They shipped me off to Rusty’s panic room. I got to make intimate acquaintance with Hatred’s bunions.”

At the name Hatred, Billy shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. The spoon dropped into the bowl with a clink. “Not hungry schuddenly.”

“If it makes ya feel any better Billy, he said he only cuddled with you when he...that time with the Phantom Limb and the orb and everything.”

“Doesn’t matter. I am so  _ sick  _ of waking up in the arms of quote-unquote  _ reformed  _ pedophiles, inside burlap sacks, hospital beds, or a barn commandeered by a nutcase in cheap costume.” Billy sighed, tossing his bowl in the kitchen sink and running water in it. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I'm sick of you getting kidnapped too.”

“Oh yeah, really puts you out to have to call someone else to pick me up.”

“I mean it, Billy! Every time someone snatches you, it causes this huge disruption in our lives. Do you even remember where we were in  _ Night Court? _ Because I sure as hell don’t.”

Billy came out, dish towel tucked into his pants. The sink still ran, he was probably going to soak all the dishes White had left since his abduction. That was Billy, not even an hour back from being kidnapped and he was doing housework.

Billy was looking at him long and thoughtful. White glanced down to see if he had any embarrassing stains.

“What?” he asked.

Billy smiled. “Nothing. Bring the rest of the dishes in here, okay?”

~`~`~`~

_ State University’s Radio Booth _

Pete took a deep breath and hit the slider.  _ Mister Magic _ crossfaded seamlessly into Steely Dan.

_ “FM, no static at all,”  _ Donald Fagen crooned. 

Pete snapped his fingers. “Heyyyy there to all you coeds and disc heads, you’re listening to the White room. I’m your host with the most, Pete White!”

Radio was the best thing that had ever happened to Pete. No one got stuck on his looks, and he could exercise his love of music all he wanted. College in general had been good for Pete White. After nearly two decades of being tormented for his differences, he could hide in plain sight. Plenty of people were freaks in college. It was just that most of them hadn’t been born freaks, like he had.

He queued up an instrumental loop of  _ Baby’s On Fire _ and leaned into the microphone. “It’s a scorcher out there today, highs at ninety-three, so double up on that sun protection. I’ll be back on the hour to give a more detailed weather report, but first, Oingo Boingo!”

The up-tempo guitar of  _ Only a Lad _ shot out through the airwaves, Pete could feel it sizzle up his veins in the best rush he’d ever known. He was in control, real control, for the first time of his life. For years he’d been sneered at for his love of music because he didn’t play an instrument. But love of music had nothing to do with being able to make it, he knew, it was in his blood. Finally he was in a place that confirmed what he had known for years; the ability to choose good music was a skill itself. 

Stepping out of the booth, he almost ran into a gangly redhead who had decided to grown his hair out to compensate for a prematurely balding pate.

“Whoah,” he did a double take, looking White up and down with mild shock. White tried not to curl under the weight of the stare. “I’m looking for the guy who runs the White room?”

“That’d be me. Pete White.” he held out his hand, trying not to flinch as the stranger took it. 

The other man snickered. “No kidding. So what’s your real name?”

White felt the conversation go over a pathetically familiar set of ruts. “That is my real name.”

To his credit, the stranger looked slightly chagrined. “...oh. Okay. well, I heard you were trying to get a D&D campaign together? I’ve got a guy willing to go in on one.”

White blinked. He’d pinned mimeographed sheets on every bulletin board on campus, but it had been months without word. 

“Yeah, uh, sure. My roommate would be able to go in on one too, but he wanted me to get the other people together first. What’s say we meet up in the cafeteria saturday?”

“It’s a date!”

White flushed slightly.

“Um, sure. Yeah. looking forward to it…?”

The stranger looked at him shiftily for a moment. He hesitated before answering: “Thaddeus. Friends call me TS.”

White’s flush grew more aggravated. “Y-you want  _ me  _ to call you that?”

TS’s eyes were shadowed. “Yeah. TS...Venture.”

White slowly put two and two together. “Venture...Venture...holy cow, you’re Rusty Venture!”

Rusty grimaced. “Yeah, like I said...TS will do.”

White’s mind was racing. TS—Rusty Venture—wanted him?—D&D—nicknames—he was going to mess it up, he was going to fumble it like he always did—

“Call me Pete,” he blurted, too enthusiastically and too loud and to sudden and damn, Rusty Venture, THE Rusty Venture wanted to be friends with him but he came on too strong—

Rusty nodded warily. “Yeah. see you then.”

Pete waited until the door shut behind him to geek out. He’d just interacted with another human. It really had been just that easy.

It wasn’t the end of it of course. He’d have to talk Werner into it—and didn’t he  _ love _ having to speak with that vaguely teutonic dickhole—he’d have to get snacks, improvise furniture because they only had the one chair. Plus there was always the looming possibility that it would all go catastrophically wrong, like things always seemed to do when he made plans, but White felt optimistic for the first time in a long time.

_ ~`~`~`~ _

_ VenTech tower _

Billy wandered into the room, buttoning his cuffs. He was smartly put together, like he was going to a business lunch.

He stopped and looked over at the couch, where White had not budged a millimeter. He gave a sigh that seemed to say  _ really? _ and walked over.

“White, come on. Pull yourself together.”

White mmphed. “Why?”

“Why? Why? We just completed a major scientific breakthrough.” Billy stared at him, palms open. “Karaoke!”

Terror rushed in. White drew his knees up to his chest. “What—no, Billy, I can’t—”

“Too bad, because it’s happening.” Billy wandered over to the electronics cabinet and rummaged around, displacing a kinect and a guitar hero controller. “We dropped a wad on the late 80’s/early 90’s expanschion pack, we’re using it.”

“Aren’t we going to talk about this?”

“We already talked,” Billy said. He was making a point of not looking at White while he busied himself setting up the machine. “You’re not leaving.”

“Goddamn, Billy, I should. I need to, there’s something—”

Billy switched the tv to the AUX channel, revealing the song selection screen. Now he stared White down as he scrolled through song choices.

“—you can’t just confess something like that and expect—”

Sullen and silent, Billy settled on entry #315. White felt blood drain from his face.

“No,” he whispered, “Billy you can’t be serious.”

A rattle of drums preceded the song opening.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself, pally, put it down—”

“ _ That’sch great it starts with an earthquake, birdsch and schnakesch and aeroplanesch,”  _ Billy shout-sang in nothing approaching the proper music key.  _ “Lenny Bruce is not afraid…” _

“Billy you can’t!” White leaped up from the couch. “You’ll snap your tongue in half!”

_ “Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn, world serves its own needs, don't mis-serve your own needs,” _ Billy spat like a man possessed.

White dove for the microphone and tried to wrest it from Billy’s hands. Billy devolved from rapidfire singing to spitting gibberish as he tried to maintain his (strong, for a person his size) grip on the microphone. In the heat of the battle for the mic, Pete heaved one way as Billy did the same and they both fell to the side. The microphone clattered to the floor and rolled beneath a chair as the empty midi track blazed on. White got up on one elbow and found Billy laid out, single eye glaring furiously at him.

“What is your damage!”

White swept hair away from his right eye. It stubbornly fell back in place afterwards. “What’s  _ my  _ damage? What’s  _ your  _ damage? I just made a major confession to you and you just want to brush it off?”

“No, I want to have the blowout karaoke jam to end all karaoke jams, then we can deal with your reluctance to confront your own sexuality.”

White flushed. “That’s not—it’s not—”

“Yes it is, whatever your schaying, it is.” Billy slapped his face, mistakenly using the bionic one, and winced. “And that crap about you being bad for me—look, we’re kind of a bad influence on each other—”

“—convincing me to splurge on cartoon memorabilia is not the same as losing you an eye, Billy—”

“—but we’re also better together than we’d ever be apart. You say it all the time that you’re my grounding influence—”

“I say that so you won’t leave!” White burst out. He blinked. Flushed deeper.

Billy looked at him oddly.

“I know,” he said. “You constantly worry about me leaving. And it’sch not for no reason—I've tried to leave a lot over the yearsch.”

White said nothing.

“You know what Monstroso told me when he had me kidnapped? You’re holding me back. He said I was the best schurgeon alive, and you were holding me back. At least 60% of that was him blowing sunshine up my ass so I'd implant a gorilla heart in his chest, but it was at least partly true. I know it is. And I still came back. Why?”

“Because I'm your nemesis.” White spoke slowly, reluctantly, “I'm your arch, Billy, not St. Cloud. I’ve done more harm to you over the years than St. Cloud ever has. Admit it. I trick you into doing stuff against your better judgement because I want to drag you down to my level.”

“No White,” Billy sighed, “you trick me into schticking around because you’re codependent. I schtick around because we’re a goddamn couple and have been for almost two decadesch.”

White’s elbow went out. He just barely caught himself on his forearms. “Wait, what?”

“Dude, our relationship is on the toxic side, but it’s not antagonizer and antagonizee. I don’t wring my handsch in anticipation of what you’ll do next, I plot out shopping lists for your hair productsch.”

White blinked, looking at the floor.

“Why,” he said finally, “would someone like you wanna be with someone like me?”

Billy squinted. “Wow, ugly duckling schyndrome really hit you bad, didn’t it?” he took a deep breath. “Firscht off, you look—”

“Not that.” Although White could really use a laundry list of his best features right now, his ego was flagging horribly. “I mean...what am I? I’m no one special. I’m not even that good a computer guy.”

Billy was looking at him. He squirmed until he no longer lay on his side, sitting on his knees. He slowly, gently reached out and touched the hair away from White’s forehead. 

“Well, why would you want to be with  _ me? _ I’m an overgrown manchild who idolizes a balding narcissist and buys way too much noschtalgia merch.”

“Oh come on—you are  _ not  _ that bad, okay? You’re enthusiastic and kind and have this really strong moral grounding and just about everything I don’t, okay? You’re a good person, Billy, I'm not. We’re polar opposites! And besides, I don’t think I'm—I'm not really—”

“Gay?” Billy said flatly.

White looked away.

“Can’t even look me in the eye, can you? White, how do you think that makes me feel, every time you say that? Like I'm not good enough for you—”

“—oh what, like it’s all flowers and sunshine?” White snapped. “You don’t know what it was like. I grew up an albino with headgear, I was a music nerd who couldn’t play a note! The last thing I needed was to slap another target on my back!”

“Oh, you’re the only one with problemsch? White, I was mama’s little geniusch in a school full of people twice my height. My mom used to dress me in a uniform—for a school that didn’t even require it! I looked like Angus Young!”

It was at this extremely inopportune time that Rusty chose to walk in. He shuffled in with a noticeable limp, looking simultaneously exhausted and smug. He came to an abrupt stop when he saw them both on the floor.

“Oh, sorry, hope I'm not interrupting anything.” he said lavisciously.

Billy rolled his eye. “Oh har-de-har-har. Are you getting the press release ready?”

Rusty stretched a bit, wincing. “What press release?”

“For the teleporter!”

“That? I abandoned that, like—” Rusty slapped a hand over his mouth, too late.

“What?” White sat up. “You gotta be kidding me, Rust. We slaved over that thing!”

“Yeah, well, upper...powers let it be known that this is not a good time for a teleporter to go live. Don’t worry, we were compensated handsomely.”

“You mean  _ you  _ were compenschated handsomely,” Billy said acidly. White was pretty sure at least 50% of that was anger rerouted from their argument, because he was doing the same thing himself.

“Dick move, Rust. That wasn’t just your teleporter, we all worked on it.”

“Yeah. And now we’re all going to be taken care of.” Rusty put a hand to his hip and winced.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, just...pulled a few hamstrings, uh, exercising.”

White snorted. “Oh goody, were you playing tennis with the buddies who shut our project down?”

“Why are you so mad? We can still have the karaoke jam.”

“No we can’t,” Billy burst out, “karaoke is a celebration of accomplishment, and all you’ve accomplished today is pissing me off!”

Rusty scoffed. “Do you need to be reminded of who signs your paychecks?”

“”Do you need to be reminded of who actually produces stuff for your company around here?” White got to his feet. “You’ve made a lot of boneheaded decisions since you inherited this place, but this ranks up there with the digi-condom idea.”

Rusty held his hands up. “Whoa, what the hell? I offered you two jobs after St. Cloud bought out your company. I could have just done a hostile takeover and left you guys in the desert—”

“You did that for  _ you!” _ White spat. Even Billy was taken aback at his fervor. “Every time you do something for us, it’s really for you! You’ve always been like that, even back in college!”

Rusty backed away, hands up. “Okay, maybe I didn’t reciprocate as much back then, but come on, I'm not as in to oral sex as you.”

In the horrible, awkward silence that followed, a pin-drop would have deafened them.

Billy’s face fell. White left his finger pointing accusingly at Rusty, blood draining from his face again.

“You—you—” Billy sputtered.

Rusty blinked, looking from one to the other. “What, you didn’t know? You didn’t tell him?”

“No,” White said through gritted teeth. Oh god, Billy had that look—what the hell was he going to do?

“White,” Billy said faintly, “tell me he’s not schaying what I think he is?”

‘Oh it was nothing!” Rusty blundered before White could fling out a game-saving lie. “Everyone experiments in college. I’m sure he’s done way more stuff with you!”

White slid his hands over his face. “Kill me,” he muttered, voice muffled by his palms.

Billy was teetering on his feet.

“I...I think I'm going to be sick.”

He raced to the elevator, bionic hand thrown over his mouth. White uncovered his face and glared at Rusty, until he gave a sheepish laugh and backed out of the room.

Well, that had gone to shit in all ways possible. White waited until the elevator was clear, and then rode up to floor 22, to the building’s smoking balcony. Billy had probably fled to his mother’s condo, all for the best really. White leaned against the railing and looked down at the streetlights, cold breath pluming from his mouth. He  really couldn’t fathom how the night could get much worse at this point.

“Hello, Peter White. We meet again.”

The world went black.


	6. Less Than Hero

Pete White awoke atop a round bed. The room he lay in had large bay windows set into the wall at regular intervals, beyond them the skyline of the city scrolled by at a languorous pace. He was probably in an airship of some sort, or a revolving restaurant. One of the two. The room was decorated with an odd assortment of memorabilia, from the Ark of the Covenant to the Yellow Submarine. In distant corner, White could see the conjecture cycle repurposed into a wet bar.

White glanced down. Someone had dressed him in a frilly open-chested shirt and an ornate brocade jacket. He had an honest-to-god cravat around his throat.

“Do you like your outfit Peter White? It is a genuine Lestat costume, though I had it tailored out of Mr. Cruise’s diminished proportions. I thought you would appreciate it as a creature that shuns the light.”

White shaded his eyes. He couldn’t make out where St. Cloud’s  voice came from, the room carried a lot of reverb.

“I am getting pretty damn sick of you knocking me out and undressing me,” he said, sitting up. “This makes what—third time? It’s creepy. You’re creepy.”

“I’m wounded. Here I've come to offer you a grand opportunity and you spit on my outstretched hand.”

The far side of the room lit up, disclosing a pool. Ripples on the water betrayed the presence of his kidnapper.

“Really, you’re going about this all wrong, instead of— _oh god, ah god my eyes!”_ White threw hands over his face.

St. Cloud emerged from the pool completely starkers. Pei Wie did not really help things as he threw Isabella RossellinI's robe from _Death Becomes Her_ over St. Cloud’s shoulders, as it did not cover what really needed to be covered.

“The world is run on capital, Peter White. If one does not have the, mmm, _skills_ for production, one must make oneself useful somehow. I am able to pick out talent in people, White, it’s something we both share.” St. Cloud crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed.

White scooted away. “For the last freakin’ time, we are not alike. Okay, I _might_ be arching Billy unintentionally—it’s not like I want to hurt the little guy!”

“And you don’t have to.” St. Cloud waved his hand. Pei Wie appeared, bearing a tray that held a zen sand garden, the white granules raked into neat waves around tiny rocks. “I am offering you only the opportunity to be my ally. You won’t have to do anything, a past time I know you’ll enjoy. Simply supply me with information and I will see to it that you’re taken care of.”

“One, I would never betray Billy like that, and two, can you get him to stop waving that tray in my face? Yes, I'm impressed with your gardening skills,” he said to Pei Wie, “I have the desktop version, got it as a secret santa gift.”

“You misunderstand my gift, Peter White. That is not sand. That is half a kilo of the finest cocaine from the fields of Bogota.”

A roaring sound had taken up residence in White’s head. He cupped a hand behind his ear. “I beg your pudding?”

“The snowstorm in front of you is only a taste of what lays in store for you. Be my ally, White.”

“I—I—I—” White squeezed his eyes shut. “No, sorry. I can’t. That’s an—insanely generous offer, but I would end up killing myself.”

“I thought that was your aim.”

White’s eyes snapped open. His reflection was doubled in St. Cloud’s dark glasses. God, he looked sick.

“You have taken up a number of self-destructive habits over the years,” St. Cloud drawled, “haven’t you, in the back of your mind, craved oblivion? You would not hurt master Whalen, as you say, but you still itch to be away from him. There would be one way to ensure that your incidental arching ceases completely.”

White licked his lips. He had developed a saliva problem all the sudden. He could envision himself diving nose-first into the pile and then…

...nothing.

“You could step right out of your life, Peter White. No more pain, no more isolation, no more questions.”

White licked his lips again. “I really shouldn’t…”

~`~`~`~

_Dressing room on the set of Quizboys_

Pete busied himself on the vanity top, Sheena Easton cranked up on the crappy boom box he’d taken to lugging between his studio apartment and the set.

_“Where I come from there’s a place called heaven,”_ the radio purred, _“that’s the place where all the good children go.”_

White lifted his head. He could spot a few stray granules stuck to the tan makeup on his upper lip. He tried retrieving them with his tongue, scowling in disgust at the mess his saliva made of the makeup. You’d think they’d invest in waterproof foundation, the cheap bastards. He snagged a kleenex and dabbed at his upper lip. Hell, that meant more time wasted mixing and matching hues, blending the edges, and powdering it so he didn’t get a sweat mustache on broadcast television.

His eye wandered down to the baggie on his vanity top. Well, as long as his upper lip was already a lost cause…

A rapid-fire knock on his dressing room door went off like a gunshot. White stumbled, clasping hands to his heart.

“Mischter White? It’sch me, Billy! Billy Whalen?”

The kid had gotten this habit of re-introducing himself every time they saw each other outside of filming. Cute, really. As if White could forget him so quickly.

He hastily dabbed on the lighter of the three foundations that went into the construction of his tan, swept the baggie into a drawer, and opened the door.

Billy stood there, hand in a bag of Doritos, munching away.

“Billy.” Pete smiled weakly. “Whatcha doin’ here, pally?”

“I wanted to thank you for that Human League tape, it’sch really great. I wasch wondering if you had any more recommendations.”

“Oh.” His heart wouldn’t slow down. In fact it had sped up on seeing Billy. The coke paranoia blossomed like an oil fire. Did he know, could he tell? Billy was frowning at his upper lip, oh god, he hadn’t had time to match the foundation, he could tell, he could see White was a fraud, soon he’d notice the pupils and the tremors and then it’s goodbye TV career, hello living in a box in an alley—

“Umm, your, umm, nose is…” Billy tapped his own nostrils.

White swiped a hand under his nose. It came away bloody.

“Oh—ah, it’s nothing.” He tried to let out a casual laugh, but it came out as a chipmunk giggle. “Rusty pipes.”

Billy took a handkerchief—and honest-to-god handkerchief with initials sewn in it and everything—and put it to Pete’s nose.

“Wow,” he said, “are you okay?”

Pete’s heart broke a little then, because he realized it was the first time someone had asked him that question in...well, he couldn’t quite remember.  He took Billy’s handkerchief, trying to conduct it so that their hands didn’t touch but failing miserably. Billy’s hand was soft.

“Oh yeah,” he lied, “just—stress, is all.”

Billy’s face crumpled in concern. “Aw man, I know what that’sch like. I had an anxiety attack during a tescht once, accidentally punched myself in the eye.”

Pete giggled, just a bit. Billy wasn’t letting go of the handkerchief.

“You shouldn’t schtress, Mischter White, you’re a very good hoscht.”

“Yeah, try telling that to my adrenal gland.”

Billy laughed a little, finally relinquishing the handkerchief. “Yeah, I know how it is. I’ll schtop buggin’ you now.”

Pete’s heart jumped. “Wait—you don’t have to—

But Billy was weaving his way past props and equipment, back to the set, back to his podium where he would stay close enough to touch but too far to reach.

White looked down at the hankie, now sodden with blood. He still felt a trickle on his upper lip. His hands both bore traces of blood, meaning he’d have to re-do their foundation too.

White turned and silently shut his dressing room door behind himself.

~`~`~`~

_St. Cloud’s Airship_

A sudden chirp from a nearby window made everyone jump.

“Pei Wie, the viewscreen!”

A shade rolled down and turned into a screen displaying a camera feed. Billy, floating in a Venture go-pod, was shouting and gesturing furiously. White’s heart sank.

“Hmmm, how amusing. Allow him ingress, Pei Wie.”

A pair of cargo doors opened up, letting in a blast of frigid air along with a shivering and swearing Billy Whalen.

“—colder than a witch’s tit in a steel bra in the ninth circle of hell!” Billy leapt from the go-pod, leaving it to putter forward and crash gently into the Olmec head from _Legends of the Hidden Temple._

White shook his head. “Billy, what are you doing here?”

“You would not believe the trouble I've gone through tonight. The entire tower is dark, I can’t get anyone on the radio. It’s bizarre.” Billy shivered. He was wearing the same thing he’d had on when he stormed out of their room, plus a small jacket. He hadn’t even stopped to put on ear muffs. White’s heart broke.

“Billy,” he said, “you should probably—”

“Can it!” Billy put up his hand. “I’m schtill mad at you, but I have to to deal with this asshole first. Who in the pluperfect hell do you think you are, Auguschtusch St. Cloud? You’ve got some massive schtones pulling off this Mickey Mouse bullschit. You were a schore loser back in our days as Quizboys, you’re a schore loser now.”

“Ah, Billy Quizboy. Finally you see that there is nothing you possess which I cannot take away—”

“I don’t _possess_ him, asshole, people aren’t things!” Billy was balling his hands up into fists and circling around the bed. Pei Wie leapt to protect his master. Before he could land a strike, Billy thrust out his left palm and engaged the fire extinguisher. Instead of AFFF foam, the god gas shot from the hose. Pei Wie fell choking to the floor.

St. Cloud paled and scooted away from him. “How trite. Resorting to chemical weapons. Did you also bring your mommy, Billy boy?” Although he meant it to be mocking, the mention of Billy’s mother was tinged with fear.

Billy capped the hand once more and cracked his knuckles. “No, just me,” he said, “god help you.”

St. Cloud stood up, earning twin groans of disgust from Billy and White.

“The trouble with you, Billy boy, is that you were always a sore winner. When you plucked that victory from my hands—”

“God, will you get _over_ it!” Billy shouted. “You’re schtill schtewing over a lossch from twenty years ago? You’re really telling me you haven’t done anything more important since then? God, that is just pathetic! Let me unpack this for you: you are currently standing next to a guy who once programmed a pedometer to perpetually read 58008 just so he could look down and giggle as he jogged, and a guy who willingly consumed a Reggie bar and paid $800 for the privilege, and you’re the most pathetic manchild in here. You’re the George Washington in this Mount Rushmore of failure. Go ahead and arch me all you want, it’sch not going to make your weenie any bigger!”

White and St. Cloud’s mouths both dropped open. Billy was panting and red in the face.

“Well?”

St. Cloud said nothing. Then he waddled over to a glass display case that held Ralph Hinkley’s cape. Hiking up his robe, St. Cloud flossed the cape back and forth between his thighs. Billy and Pete both groaned again, shielding their eyes.

“Okay, you know what? Fuck off.” White stood up, ripping the cravat from his throat and tossing it in the pool. “Keep your coke and your ill-gotten memorabilia. You’re just a gross little troll. You want to arch somebody? I’ve got a death ray for ya.” He hit his fist against his palm with a loud smacking sound.

St. Cloud dropped the cape, sweating. “Ah. yes. Well.” he looked down to where Pei Wie rolled around on the floor, choking. “There is one thing an arch nemesis must always have.”

“Health insurance?”

“An escape route!” St. Cloud overturned a suit of armor as he waddled away at high speed to a small outlet on the wall. It churned out a small escape pod that beetled away from the ship.

Billy just shook his head. “Wow.”

White squinted. “How fast is he going in that thing? How fast are we going? Should we wrench the controls away or something?”

“Nah. I got a look of this thing from the outside. It’s a totally schweet replica of a Jules Verne airship. We’re going about running pace for a slug here.” Billy sighed and walked over to the crashed form of the Venture go-pod.

Pete squatted over Pei Wie. He seemed dazed, mouthing something at the ceiling. Pete drew the coverlet from the round bed and tossed it over the other albino.

“Namaste, buddy,” he murmured.

He stood up. Billy had paced the length of the hull, examining the fixtures.

“Well, what should we do, then? Should we moor this thing at the Empire State building, like in the olden days?”

“White, no one ever actually moored a zeppelin at the Empire State, updraftsch made that imposschible. Let’s just go out the way we came.”

“Really? But it’s freezing and I'm—well look at me!” White gestured to himself.

Billy grinned mischievously at a nearby glass case. “That looks warm enough.”

White followed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t, Billy, that would be a sacrilege. That’s still got Peter Mayhew’s sweat in it.”

“It’s no more blasphemous than leaving it here for St. Cloud. Come on.”

They boarded the Venture go-pod (White now wearing a Chewbacca costume with the head tucked under his arm) and Billy hit the cargo button. The blast of air nearly unseated them, but White tightened his grip around Billy’s midsection and didn’t slip. The city reeled beneath them as Billy kicked the go-pod into gear and suddenly they were in the sky, the cargo hatch closing neatly behind them. Billy handled the pod like he’d been born for it.

Pete waited until they were above some buildings that looked like they gave a slim chance of survival if he was pushed from the go-pod to ask: “so...are you still mad?”

He could just see the back of Billy’s head. The wind nearly stole his reply. “Well yeah.”

“But you still got me?”

“Well yeah.”

“Okay.” White paused. Beneath him, the city looked so neat beneath the snow. He realized that it was nearly Christmas and he hadn’t even bothered looking for a present for Billy.

Billy sighed. “Look, I don’t care how you want to classchify this. If you’re not comfortable with the g-word, that’sch fine. If you don’t want to have schex, that’s okay, it’s not super-crucial to me.”

“Whaaat? Then what was all that _flower of a woman_ talk back when we were messing with the shrink ray?”

“That was more of a rite of passage thing for me, because I knew you guys would razz me incessantly if I didn’t. I view it like the Kringle from Trader Joe’s. If I only get it once a year, maybe not even that frequently, that’sch still okay.”

White’s ears burned. He was half tempted to don the Chewbacca head, but then he wouldn’t be able to look at Billy. And he couldn’t tear his gaze from the short red hair that dusted against his face.

“You promise you won’t go running off?” he asked, “I mean, unless you get kidnapped?”

“White, I scholemnly swear that I am going to stick to your pasty behind like two waffles that overflowed the griddle. Now—” his Jphone rang, so he fumbled for it as the wind numbed his hands. “Yello? Oh, it’s about damn time—no, I'm cruising around in a Delorean, what do you think I'm….no...no...well I called and called and no one was answering...yeah...uh huh...what the hell is a Schaphrax?” Billy looked over his shoulder at White. “Guild business went down in the tower.”

“Oh. Is that why you came alone?”

“What?” Billy turned back to the phone. “No, I wasn’t going to go crying to the OSI for help, I was just asking if I could borrow a pod—” he listened intently for a moment, “wait, the Monarch is _what??”_

~`~`~`~

_VenTech Tower_

Pete pulled his fleece pajama top over his head. His body was beginning to resist every movement, all he wanted to do was fall into bed and pretend today never happened. Lestat’s outfit lay on the hamper. He would put it away for another time, he could probably go clubbing in it, but for now all he wanted were sweatpants and a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

“Billy,” he called, “ya still here?”

“Here.”

White stepped into the kitchenette, where Billy sat on the dining room table. He had taken the two-thirds of a white chocolate torte from the fridge and stuck a number of small lit candles on it.

White covered his face with a hand. “Oh Billy, no, come on—”

“Hey, we have to do this, it’s the law.”

“Fine,” White sighed. But he was smiling.

He gingerly got up on their wobbly dining room table until they sat face-to-face across from each other.

“You know this isn’t going to stymie St. Cloud, right? If anything his thirst for vengeance will be doubled.”

“Let him come. The Pink Pilgrim and the Quizboy will route him as many times as it takesch.” Billy’s face shifted from glee to wary stoicism. “So you and Ruschty...you..”

White sighed. “Look, it was never really anything. He was just using me as a distraction in place of a real relationship...and if I'm being honest with myself, so was I.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want anyone to know. Kinda pathetic, throwing pity-blowjobs at your childhood idol.”

“White.” Billy grabbed his hands very carefully away from the candle heat. “Schay it with me now: it’s not pathetic to want affection. It’s not pathetic to be attracted to someone.’

“Fine fine.” White swallowed. “But ah..ease me into it, okay? I’m new to this relationship stuff.”

Billy snorted. “About twenty years too late for new, but okay.”

White couldn’t stop his grin. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Thanks for yelling at Ruschty for me.”

“Thanks for making St. Cloud crap himself.”

Billy’s chin dipped down at the candles. “Make a wish.”

“It already came true.”


	7. I'm a Winner, I'm a Sinner

_Quizboys set_

_Bily leaned against the quizboy podium. His tie was undone, along with his top two buttons. He smiled knowingly and confidently, and every word he dropped was like a wink._

_“Scho,” he murmured, his speech impediment barely a whisper, “you got into hosting in college?”_

_“Oh, erm, yeah. Kinda fell into the job, actually.”_

_“Faschinating. You’re a natural talent.” Billy toyed with his lower lip before sucking it in. “anything...else you learned?”_

_“Ahh.” the studio set was uncomfortably warm. “A f-few...things.”_

_Billy’s smile grew and he kicked off from the podium like a seabird diving from a cliff in one curvilinear swoop. “You could show me…” he said, a slight swagger in his steps, “...a few things…” he swept a hand across his cowlick. “...if you wanted…”_

_~`~`~`~_

_Ventech Tower_

“...and? That wasch juscht getting hot!”

“Well, um.” White put his head down. “I never...I didn’t let myself get past that. After all, you were still pretty much a kid. I’m not Kevin Spacey over here.”

Billy snorted. “Okay, one: you’re not that much older than me—.”

“But you _act_ younger, Billy.”

“For the public eye. But I totally dialed up the maturity when it was just us.”

Pete blinked. “Wait, you’re saying you were…”

“Aw come on!” Billy hit his arm lightly. “I wasch hardcore flirting with you! How did you not pick up on that?”

The heat that drew to Pete’s face was not unpleasant. “I thought we were just talking about music.”

“Yeah, because I knew you were into it. I memorized the bands that would be blaschting through your dressing room door and looked them up. I’m a quizboy, it’s what I do.” Billy’s rakish grin was so dorky Pete couldn’t help but smile back.

“Well, I got so used to stopping myself I never started again once we...anyway, that wasn’t the kid of relationship we had.”

“What-ev-er, we have a molten sexual tension and you know it.” Billy kicked his feet up on the sofa.

They had commandeered the penthouse while Brock went to sort out the guild business with Rusty and Meteor Majure. The pair had spent the day taking spite-showers and watching every show on Rusty’s Netflix queue so that he wouldn’t be able to tell where he left off in _Riverdale._

The sweetest revenge was petty revenge after all.

Pete could almost forget the shame and horror of the previous night’s blow up when he looked at Billy’s roundfaced grin. He hoped, even though he knew better, that the subject would be closed forever and they could simply continue on as they had, just with ...bonus stuff added on. That hope sleeted away like ice from a calving glacier when Rusty walked in, snappish, with Brock tailing behind. The gargantuan bodyguard looked uncharacteristically concerned, while Rusty seemed more frazzled than usual.

“—check it again, I can’t believe for one second that crumbum—” he spotted the duo lounging on his furniture. “Oh make yourselves right the hell at home. Do you have any idea what my night’s been like?”

“No. Do you have any idea what _our_ night’s been like?”

Rusty scowled at being preempted. “Well...I've had more drama in the past 24 hours than a freaking Kardashian. I just found out I might be related to—”

“—Doc, it’s a total match, there’s no _might_ about it—”

“—I am not going to take the word of their freaking stone-age computer tech, I want it run through something more recent than a Commodore 64!” Rusty stopped himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, just...whatever’s going on between you two, I don’t want to…” he gestured vaguely.

The room went silent. The pair on the couch looked at nothing in particular. Billy moved first, uncurling his legs and sitting upright. Pete swept his hair further onto his face, blocking his eyes. Brock sighed.

“I’m gonna go defrost some breakfast sausages. Dean’ll be hungry when he gets back.”

The tall blond stalked off to the kitchen, leaving the three nerds to their own devices.

Billy sighed. “Okay, look...I get that you two weren’t really...I'm juscht hurt that thisch never came up over the years.”

“Well, it was never that big of a thing,” Rusty said, pushing his glasses a little higher. “It was just two nerds experimenting in a dorm room.”

“And in some bushes behind the Liberal Arts building.”

“And one time in the pool.”

“Enough!” Billy recoiled. “I’ve heard enough. So you weren’t dating, you weren’t in a relationship. But you let me go this whole time thinking you weren’t into men!”

“Yeah, that one’s on me.” Pete put his hand up.  “I just thought I'm not the type who anyone would wanna be in a relationship with.” He could feel Rusty’s gaze on him, it had the weight of a biting fly. “Plenty of people have sex and it doesn’t mean anything.”

“God, do you lischten to yourself?” Billy rolled his eye. “Nothing meansch anything if you don’t let it.”

Pete furrowed his brow. “...wha?”

“I’m schaying that not admitting you like schomething isn’t the schame as not liking the thing. Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away. You can never admit when schomething’s important to you, you’ve never been able to.”

“So what, I'm supposed to go around like you? Declaring war every time someone says boo about some obscure 70’s cartoon?” Rusty was smiling at the both of them, the sight of his amusement jump-started Pete’s verbal venom. “I can’t be that open with people, Billy, I can’t run around screaming to the mountaintops—”

“No-one’s aschking you to scream, leascht of all me. But can you admit, especially since it’s just us, that you like me?”

Rusty chuckled. It was a dry huff of air that barely made a sound. Anxiety heated the back of Pete’s neck.

“What, do we hold hands and skip around everywhere?” panic was raising his pulse. Why oh why did Rusty have to be right here? Years of classroom taunts burned in his blood. “Everything sunshine and daisies—”

Rusty snorted back a chuckle. “Oh my god, you two are too damn cute. _Just kiss him already, White!”_

White blinked. He looked at Rusty, who was crossing his arms smugly. The scientist nodded pointedly at Billy. White looked at Billy. The humiliation fell away as if it hadn’t ever been there in the first place. No one was watching him smirking, judging, waiting to punch him in the ribs for being different. There was just Billy, watching him with a sort of exasperating fondness. Rusty smirking in an I-knew-it fashion, but there was no malice in his eyes. Rusty made a go-on gesture. Pete turned back to Billy, who had propped his elbows on his knees.

“‘It’sch like I keep telling you dude,” he said, with a grin that infected Pete’s own face quickly, “you’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

Pete leaned forward. He could feel the distance between them contract like it was nothing at all, until there was nothing but Billy right in front of him, waiting, watching—

Dean burst into the penthouse. “Dad, Hank’s gone missing!”

Rusty sighed, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. “Well, there went the only tolerable part of my day.” He paused, eyes popping wide open again. “Wait, Hank’s what?”

~`~`~`~

_The Venture compound_

“Aww, Billy, he’s as handschome as you said he was.”

“You said I was handsome?” White blinked.

Mother and son smiled at him. Then Rose did one better and wrapped him in a hug.

“I’m scho glad my Billy has found someone to look after him.” Rose said, the Shalimar fog that surrounded her permeating his clothes so that even when she pulled away White was covered in the ghost of her scent.

“I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, _mother.”_ Billy capped the statement off with a teenagery eyeroll.

“I gotta say he’s done his fair share of saving my bacon, Mrs. Whalen.” White didn’t know what to do with his hands. Why was she smiling so much? No one had been this happy to see him since…

White looked over at Billy, who was smiling again. They really were eerily alike, with their round sunny faces and tiny little eyes.

“Oh, you really have to call me Rose, schweetie. And this gentleman here you can call Rodney.”

“We’ve met,” the three said in unison.

The former Action Man shifted, farting slightly. Billy coughed. Pete scratched his arm. The only way the moment could be more awkward was if  a stray dog dropped by and exhumed the late Dr. Entmann.

“You know, Billy never did tell me what he got up to after he left home. Do you know what happened to his eye?”

A deathly chill fell over Pete. “Oh. Ah. Wellllll...”

“Mom, will you let it go?” Billy rolled his eye. “It wasch just an accident, right White?”

White nodded too fast. “Yeah, um, exactly.”

“So what is it that you do, young mister White?” Rodner shifted, digging his underpants out of his crack.  “I know you’re a friend of Rusty’s from back in the day, but I never got a bead on what it is you’re good for.”

“Oh...not much.” Christ, a firing squad would be less nerve-racking. White was startled by a surprisingly strong slap on the back.

“Oh, Pete’s our computer expert at Conjectural Technologies,” Billy said, “you should see it, mom. This guy can code like a fiend, and don’t even get me started on the mag-lev unit we’re building.” Pete blinked, looking at Billy, searching for any sign of sarcasm. Nope, Billy met his eyes and dropped a wink, a maneuver that was doubly impressive because every blink of his eye was essentially a wink.

Rose beamed. Pete smiled, relieved. The relief died a horrible death with her next sentence: “we’d love to come see it.”

“No!” they shouted in unison.

“We’re...under construction,” White blurted.

“Yeah, total hard-hat zone. Maybe sometime down the line.”

“Oh, well that’s juscht too bad.” Rose bent and laid a sloppy kiss on a protesting Billy. Then, to his great shock, she did the same to White. It left a wet spot that whiffed of Shalimar, but it felt...nice.

Rose patted his cheek and smiled maternally.

“I hope you boysch won’t be strangers now,” she said, “drop by for dinner schometimes.”

“Mo~om, I have a life you know.” Billy crossed his arms.

“Well, you gotta take a break for the little things sometimes, slugger.” Rodner held out a hand first to Billy, than to White. “Anyway be sure and call first before you come over. You never know what might be going on.”

“Oh Rodney.”

“Well, I'm already  wearing kneepads, Rose. Might as well make good use of ‘em.”

The giggling couple walked away from the horrorstuck faces of Billy and Pete.

“You wanna—”

“—get really drunk really fast? You read my mind.”

Walking back to the Venture compound to raid Rusty’s wet bar, White allowed himself a moment to puzzle why Rose’s reaction threw him so. It was the first time someone had been pleasantly happy to see him since…

He snuck a look down at Billy, who was grimacing as if chewing through a tar sandwich.

“Maybe we could see your mom for dinner,” he ventured timidly, “just...sometimes. So she doesn’t worry.”

Billy started. “Hmm? Oh yeah, we are definitely going for dinner, her Veal Piccata is amazing. But we have to pretend to be reluctant or she’ll catch on and start pushing for more.”

“I think I can do that.” Pete smiled.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech Tower_

Pete lay awkwardly on his back, one knee crooked. Billy lay on his side to the left of him, first two buttons undone, propped up on one elbow. He lay his free hand gently on Pete’s arm, but that was all. They had retreated back to their room away from any further potential interruptions, but the mood had been quietly killed in the penthouse and no amount of awkward small talk seemed able to resurrect it.

“So, um...what do you think we should do?”

“You’re askin’ me?” Pete was flop-sweating worse than his first audition. “I’ve messed around before but...not like this.”

“You want me to put up some old blacklight posters?” Billy grinned cheekily.

“Not that.” Pete swatted at his shoulder. “I mean with someone I actually care about. You’re gonna laugh at me.”

“I am not gonna laugh at you.”

“Yeah you are. It’s what I'd do.”

“Uh-huh. And since when do I ever do something you’d do?”

White thought back and admitted to himself that probably wasn’t the case.

“Well, let’s start small then. A kiss.”

“A kiss? Kiss _ing_ , White. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

Pete sighed. “Okay, fine. K-i-s-s-i-n-g.” He turned and deftly thumbled the Invisalign out of his mouth, depositing the halves into their case. He turned and found Billy palming the breath spray he’d been using while Pete had his back turned. He choked back a laugh.

“Billy—really?”

“What? I want our first time to be good.” Billy tugged on his lapels. “Let’s get to it.”

“Maybe we should—oumph.” White’s sentence was cut short as Billy artlessly clamped their mouths together. He really did kiss like his mother, sloppy and with too much saliva. Pete quickly tried to scrape that mental image from his brain.

Billy drew back. “What’sch wrong? You feverish?” He held his right hand up to White’s forehead.

White squeaked. “Nothin’. Keep going.”

Billy kissed him again, gentler this time. Pete tried to slow his pulse, encircling Billy with his arms. He kept his mouth soft, his hands barely touching Billy’s back. He needed to make sure not to hurt Billy in any way, make sure there was nothing even remotely traumatic during his first time because if he hurt Billy, even on accident, he would never be able to forgive himself.

Billy drew away, exasperated. “Are you even _trying,_ dude?”

Pete flushed. Oh god, this was college all over again. He was fucking it up, he was botching it and Billy was going to change his mind and leave. “Erm—”

Billy grabbed his head with both hands, fingers digging into White’s hair, and laid a forceful kiss on his lips. _Oh._ White laid his hands on Billy’s forearms and let himself be kissed. It really was nothing like he’d imagined when he’d had his moment of truth with Shoreleave. He’d imagined Billy as sweet and shy and, well, _virginal,_ but it really wasn’t like that at all and...he _liked_ it.

Billy speared Pete’s mouth with his tongue and Pete whimpered. If they’d been standing, his knees would have buckled. Billy was so forceful and bossy and knew exactly what he wanted, so Pete let him have it.

Long ago, Pete White had learned to be completely selfish in bed, because he had discovered with Rusty that he had a tendency to be so subservient that his own needs went completely neglected. But now he let Billy be selfish, let Billy grab all he wanted because it felt amazing, the kissing and the grinding and Billy’s metallic hand on his ass—

“Ohhhhhhrheapearlman!” White gasped, spending himself in his shorts.

Billy drew away, blinking.

White colored furiously, gasping. “Oh man—it’s not—I'm sorry.”

Billy probed the spreading wet spot on the front of Pete’s shorts. “I did that?” He pet the area, making Pete tremble. “I made you come already?”

Pete swallowed. “I don’t normally—I wasn’t—” he tried to think of an excuse that didn’t make him seem even more pathetic.

Billy’s face lit up with a smug glee. “I did that. Awwww-schome.” He latched back onto Pete’s lips with renewed vigor. And Pete didn’t shrink back, he met Billy’s caresses with equal force.

~`~`~`~

_Conjectural Technologies_

“...can’t believe he wanted to keep the money, after all that.” the much-abused trailer door bounced as Billy kicked it open. “Hank waschn’t even really kidnapped! He got to hang out with Captain Sunschine, I’d _pay_ for that privilege.”

“Well, we got it back, Billy. You shouldn’t worry about it anymore.” White frowned. He felt guilty because he’d been the first to cave to Rusty’s begging. Billy, for once, had been prepared to draw a line in the sand for his boyhood hero. Besides it was Hank kidnapped—Hank! The kid would kidnap himself if given half the chance.

But he had seen the worry behind Rusty’s exasperation. He still had a soft spot for his former friends-with-benefits after all, then.

Billy darted off to the kitchenette. “Okay, I know I schaid we weren’t going to blow the whole wad on schuperfluous junk, buuuuut….” he dragged a box from behind the counter.

Pete squinted. _“Damare-hako 3000._ A karaoke machine, Billy?”

“I ordered it before we got the check.” Billy was bouncing with delight as he unpacked it. “It’sch got the biggest schtorage space out of all the models, so we can order exspansion packs as we go. I even nabbed a pack on schale.”

“Really? What is it, golden oldies or the best of christian rap?” Despite his sarcasm, Pete was smiling. It was nice seeing Billy so giddy.

“Nah. American Pie, Rocket Man, and Breakfascht in America.”

“That’s a weird assortment.”

“Look, it was on schale. Now are you going to join me in blowing the assch out of this thing?”

“Billy,” Pete was shaking his head. “Neither of us can sing.”

“That’sch not the point of karaoke. The point is that everyone schounds terrible together.” Billy dialed up a song and handed Pete the extra mic. “Just sing backup if you’re not comfortable.”

Supertramp’s lonely piano chords chimed through their speakers.

_“Don’t you look at my girlfriend—”_

_“—girlfriend—”_

_“—she’s the only one I got. Not much of a girlfriend—”_

_“—girlfriend—”_

_“—never seem to get a lot.”_

_“What’s she got, not a lot.”_

Smiling, Pete let Billy lead on through the music, totally out of key and off tempo and 100% confident in himself. And even though they gave each other endless shit for their own individual splurges here and there, the machine never came up once in an argument.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone else love how clearly Rusty is a shipper on deck for these two? Like, he's called Pete Billy's boyfriend, I don't think it's even subtext at this point.


	8. Stay

_Spanakos_

White writhed. The hotel sheets had felt fine when he’d laid down on them, but the mediterranean mid-summer heat had turned them into a bed of the most wilted Burger King lettuce with a side of unpleasant sauce. His limbs tangled in the sheets like so much sargassum. Billy, despite making up about 40% of the human mass in the bed, took up about 75% of the space, leaving White with a small sliver of Billy-free mattress. White’s face throbbed with the sting of developing sunburn, sea salt, and sweat.

In short, this was not a good Spanakopita for Pete White.

There really had been no reason to accompany Rusty and Billy here, and a thousand and one reasons to stay home. But the shock of seeing Rusty really, truly happy, well...damn it, maybe he did still have residual feelings for him. To say nothing of Billy’s bouncing enthusiasm for a real vacation, finally (“no schtaying at a La Quinta and pretending I’ve got progeria for a pity-dischcount.”) There just wasn't any hope for Pete White.

White’s left leg and arm went numb from the weight of Billy’s sprawled carcass.  That numbness traveled into his dreams, where he sat at the bottom of an oubliette with the sun slowly crawling across the floor in a deadly beam. Billy huddled by his side in a blue dress and unflattering perm, scowling.

“I don’t underschtand why I would even be afraid of this, I'm not an albino.”

“Yeah, but you’re a redhead, Billy. That’s like, halfway to an albino.” White was sweating. He tried to position himself so he was as far away from the creeping menace of the sun as he could be.

“So? I’m redhead too, but I tan just fine.” Rusty stood at the door to the oubliette, dressed in exact replica of Armand from _Interview with the Vampire,_ minus the prodigious bald patch on his head. “You’re both just being dramatic.”

“You’re being a dick, Rust.” White took off his fur-lapeled jacket and draped it over the both of them like a blanket. It left him only in his shirtsleeves and brocaded vest. His white hair fell past his shoulders in a sheer curtain. Damn, too bad he couldn’t see himself, he was probably rockin’ this look. “Why don’t you come in here if you're so sure you won’t burn?”

Rusty looked shifty. “I can’t, I've got a...a thing. Stuff to do. Anyway, quit bitching. I'll come back tonight and let you out.”

“We’ll be burnt to a crischp you asschole!” Billy shook his fist.

“La-la-la can’t hear you!” Rusty shout-sang, pulling the door shut and condemning them to their crisping prison.

“Thisch. Blows.” Billy grimly surveyed their situation.

“You’re tellin’ me.” White squinted at the moving sunlight. This didn’t quite gel with his memory of the 1994 movie. Louis was in a coffin during this scene, wasn’t he?

A hem of Billy’s dress smoldered in the light. Billy yelped and snatched it back. White pressed his lips together and made a decision.

Wedging Billy in between his back and the wall, White pressed as far away from the light as he could.

“White? No.” Billy’s voice broke a little. “You’re going to die. And then I'm going to die because you’re not enough to cover me.”

White sweat buckets. “I know.” The light crept closer.

“Scho why?” Closer.

“This is all I can do.” Closer. His shoes started smoking.

“White.” Billy was tearing up, White could hear it in his voice even if he was too much of a coward to turn back and see his face for the last time.

Closer. He pressed Billy into the wall, his back numbing from the pressure. Billy’s legs hooked around his ribcage and _squeezed._ Closer. Billy clung tighter. Closer. Tighter still.

White’s eyes snapped open.

Billy lay astride his back, face clenched in effort. He grunted in his sleep.

White blinked, gaze drifting from the visible portion of his back to Billy’s face. His sleep-mired brain took a second to confirm that yes, they were currently spooning in only their underwear.

White jostled him gently.

Billy twisted, pulling on White’s shoulders.

White blinked, the reality of their position descending with a crash. Holy shit. This was why he’d been against getting a single. White tried to push him off. Billy was surprisingly strong for a man his size.

“Whiiiiite!” Billy groaned.

White made one last unsuccessful attempt to throw him off. It woke him instead.

Billy gasped, blinking. “White, I've got it. I know how we can beat St. Cloud.”

“Uh, pally?” White asked uneasily.

Billy looked down and then, gingerly, removed his person from White’s back. “Um, schorry. I was having another stop motion dream again.”

_“20 Million Miles to Earth?”_

“Nah. _Clasch of the Titans.”_ Billy heaved out of bed and started pacing, awkwardness discarded. “It hit me during the dream. The one place St. Cloud is vulnerable. We have to hit him and hit him hard.”

“Sure, Billy.” White rolled over and draped an arm over his eyes. “tomorrow.”

“No, it hasch to be tonight! Get drescht, we’re going on a raid.”

There were few things White wanted less than staying in the sweaty prison of their grimy hotel sheets, but going on a midnight raid to the X-1 was a list topper.

...on the other hand, staying here gave him too much reign to think about the position they’d been in before waking.

White reluctantly shifted his legs out of bed and sat up.

~`~`~`~

_The desert_

The motel’s night clerk squinted, her lipsticky mouth forming into a comma as she stared down White’s id card. Behind her cat’s eye glasses, her gaze scanned the nervously grinning pair before her.

Billy had been convinced to don a scout uniform, sans hat (“they didn’t fit me when I was young enough to be a scout, why the hell would it fit now?”) while White had rumpled his immaculate coiffure and removed his suit jacket to capture that desperate dad look.

“Y’all are father and son?”

“Oh yeah, on the trip of a lifetime.” White patted Billy’s head in a stilted and not at all convincing manner.

“I’m going to Dischneyland!” Billy threw his arms up.

The clerk was unimpressed.

White leaned forward, cupping his hand beside his mouth. “Between you-me, this is one of those make-a-wish dealies. The little man’s got progeria, the doctor says he’s got the lifespan of a hamster.”

The clerk moved her gaze from White’s desperate grin to Billy, whose pasted-on smile was trembling with barely concealed terror.

She sighed and pushed the ledger forward. “Room 206. Here’s your ice bucket and your blacklight.”

“Wait, blacklight?” Billy squinted.

“We just had an expose by channel 6. If your room is more than 70% covered in visible stains, you get a free pair of spa sandals inexchangeforsigninganondisclosureagreement.”

Billy grimaced, pulling on White’s sleeve. “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s not schtay here.”

“Look, you can’t sleep outside in the desert.” White grabbed the key, which stuck to the countertop for one horrible second. “There’s a drastic temperature drop at night and scorpions.”

“At leascht the scorpions are _clean.”_

“Oh there’s scorpions in the room too,” the clerk conveyed in a bored tone, having returned to _Last Exit to Eden._

_“Great.”_

“Come on pally, just look at it like an adventure.” Pete jostled him with an elbow. “You think Rusty Venture slept on silk sheets every night?”

“No.” Billy looked sulky for a moment. “Okay. but if we find a single used prophylactic, I'm schleeping in the car.”

“Billy, we have a moped.”

“Schomeone elsche’s car.”

The door to their room swung open halfway before sagging on its hinges. To their right an increasingly enthusiastic tempo of thumping and squeaking springs pounded out. To their left was a rapidfire argument in Colombian Spanish, punctuated by the phrase “puta madre.”

Billy clung to White’s side. “I _really_ don’t wanna schtay here.”

“It’s just for one night, Billy. As soon as we hit those underground quizzes, we’ll be raking in the dough. I’ll take you someplace nice, somewhere with jacuzzi tubs.” White flung the coverlet off, revealing a sheet that shone solid flourescent under the blacklight. He put the coverlet back, patting it in place as if tucking in a shovelful of dirt over a corpse. Billy’s whole face was scrunched up in disgust.

“I’m schleeping in a drawer.”

“Aww, you don’t have to do that.”

“It’sch cool.” Billy was already tugging out the bottom drawer from the bureau. “I do it all the time. People don’t ever use these, scho it’sch guaranteed clean.”

White watched his practiced movements. Despite what he thought he knew in the short time they’d been acquainted, Billy still found ways to surprise him.

Billy curled up in the drawer, using his folded jacket as a pillow. White draped over the loveseat with upholstery the color and softness of cardboard. His legs dangled over the armrest and a broken spring jabbed him in the side, but it was better than sleeping on other people’s effluence. Draping his jacket over himself, White closed his eyes.

The bedsprings went on squeaking. The argument had increased in volume and passion, joined by the click of gun safeties releasing.

“White?”

“Yeah, pally?”

“I can’t schleep.”

“I know.” Pete rummaged around. “Here, I've got my walkman.”

Billy got out of the drawer and pushed it so it lay before the sofa. White started the tape and turned one headphone earpiece outward, contorting his body so that he and Billy could press their heads together semi-comfortably.

Danny Elfman crooned that this was not a sitcom, where everything’s alright, or a prison, with terror through the night. Pete was not inclined to believe either of those statements. His whole life had seemed like one long black joke, and this was perhaps the blackest bit of all because he had dragged someone else into it. Despite the air he put on to reassure Billy, he really had no clue what he was doing. Maybe the underground quizzes were really just a myth, maybe the next night they’d have to sleep in the desert and die by scorpion sting. Maybe they’d die tonight, knifed by a paranoid Columbian eliminating potential witnesses to a failed coke deal

White looked down. Billy had fallen asleep already, mouth hanging open. White did not move to collect the headphones to selfishly press against his own ears. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on the left channel mix, how they had separated out all the different instruments.

_“Don’t. Don’t you go. Stay with me one more day. If we get through one more night…”_

White drifted off.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech Tower_

White’s eyes snapped open for no apparent reason. He took stock of the room. Yes, it was his room, and yes, it was in the same state it had been when he’d fallen asleep. So why…

White looked down and found Billy’s head tucked into his collar bone. _Oh._

They had fallen asleep in a lopsided yin-and-yang arrangement, White contorting his body so that Billy’s head did not put pressure on his chest but his cheek still rested on White’s body like a pillow.

White smiled and stroked the ball of his thumb down the side of Billy’s head, pressing his lips to the top of the great dome. Then he closed his eyes and dipped back into unconsciousness.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech Tower, morning_

Billy jotted down something on a clipboard. White idly tapped keys. In the test area, a platform hovered briefly before settling gently down again.

Billy fist-pumped. “Yesch! That mag-lev unit is on track!”

White slid the goggles back from his eyes. “I just need to work out the overheating factor and we’ll be in like flint.”

A strange sensation took over his left hand. White looked over and found Billy slyly sliding his hand into White’s. White’s first instinct was to pull away, but Billy was too quick and locked their fingers.

“Nuh-uh, cowboy. I claim this hand for schience.”

“W-we can’t hold hands, Billy! What are we, tween girls?”

“Yup,” Billy said dryly, not relinquishing the hand.

White peppered with fear sweat. Years of social conditioning triggered an instinct to wrestle his hand from Billy’s lest someone saw, someone saw him relaxed and enjoying himself for once in his damned life…

White made his hand relax.

Billy doubled up his grip, smug. “Scho waddya think about lunch? I’m craving flatbread.”

“I kinda wanted to try the kebab place Dean told us about.” White wasn’t flop-sweating, he wasn't tensing up. Could it all be this easy? He let their hands dangle between their bodies like a hammock of casual PDA. Easy.

The door hissed open, and they jerked their hands apart a split-second too late.

“—and my idiot son just checked his idiot ass out of the hospital—” Rusty stopped short, looking smug. “Oh _my._ Did I interrupt something?”

“Yes,” Billy said flatly.

“Oh, pardon me then.” The doc leered.

Both of the scientists glared at him.

“What?” Rusty thought a moment, then frowned. “Oh, you’re still miffed about the transporter thing, aren’t you?”

_“Miffed_ is a bit of an understatement.”

“Well, I just had it used to kidnap me last night, how the hell do you think I feel?” Rusty took off his glasses and scrubbed them with his shirt hem. “Believe me, I want to improve the world for mankind just as much as you, but the other interested party made a very...compelling argument. I’ll recycle some of their compensation funds into the R&D program if that’ll make you happy.”

“Yeah, you’d better.” Billy finally shifted his goggles, struggling to separate his eyepatch from the strap.

“So what are you up to in here? Designing a clean-energy train I can sell to the city?” Rusty rubbed his hands together greedily.

“No, we’re making the conjecture cycle 2.0,” White said, “those go-pods suck as passenger vehicles.”

“Hey, we just need to figure out a braking mechanism and they’ll be fine!”

“1:that’sch ignoring all the other drawbacks to that thing and 2:you can’t scheat two comfortably.” Billy patted his hair, in disarray from the goggle strap.

“So? Who wants to ride tandem on a hoverbike?”

They both gave Rusty scathing looks.

“Okay fine, you don’t need my input.” Rusty threw his hands up in irritation. “But you need to come up to the penthouse, we’re putting together a search team for Hank.”

“Oh come on, it’s Hank.” Pete gestured away from their room in the tower. “Give him about a day, he’ll show up on the doorstep missing his shoes and pretending not to cry.”

“I dunno, he’s shown some crazy survival skills in the past.” Billy slid a fingertip thoughtfully along his mouth. “Remember that time he went ‘camping’ by himself? Lost the map but somehow managed to locate the highway with a forked stick and a leaf.”

“Yeah, no idea how he even did that.” Rusty sighed, pinching his nose. “But that was the woods outside the compound, this is New York. He’ll probably try to Kevin McAllister someone’s house and run afoul of some crackheads.”

“Well, whaddya want us to do about it? We’re not Huggy Bear, it’s not like we have our ear to the streets,” White said.

“Look, just—” Rusty sighed again. He looked older then, and weary. “I need to know people are out there looking for him. I’m his father. It’s the very least my father would do.”

Billy and Pete looked at each other. “All right, Rust.”

General Gathers was holding the floor when they walked in. Shoreleave, the Triad, Brock, Dean, Hatred, and the pirate captain all gathered in the conversation pit. Corporal Snoopy tapped away at an OSI laptop.

“Item: Hank is suffering from a recent cranial injury. Item: Hank is in possession of an extremely naive worldview. Item: Hank believes himself to be some sort of superhero. Conclusion; Hank has already been snapped up by scientologists.”

“Yeah, except Hank thinks personality tests are, like, actual tests and tries to outsmart them,” Dean chimed in, “and the last time a cult tried to recruit him he thought they were trying to get the location of the Ark of the Covenant out of him and tried to bullwhip everyone with his belt.”

Gathers’ glasses drooped, along with his cigarette. “Good god, that boy’s dead as a doornail then. If even the tambourine shakers don’t want ya, there’s not a whole lot of friendly faces in the big apple.”

“Hey, Hank’s not that dumb!” Dean considered a moment. “Maybe. Anyway, he’s got moxy and grit. That counts on the streets, right?”

“Uh, yeah, if you’re an intrepid girl reporter in the 20’s.” The Alchemist waved his hand. “Look, it’s Hank. We check all the toy stores and Guitar Centers in the area, Hank’s bound to be in one.”

“Arr, I'd be checking central park as well.” the captain held a finger up. “The boy might have set up a stick fort as a base of operations.”

Billy stepped forward, looking crisp and prepared. “Gentlemen, we know that Hank has no cash on him, and carriesch a childhood phobia of schubways harboring the mole people. He has to be schomewhere within the tri-borough area.”

White peered over Snoopy’s shoulder. “Narrow the search to include frequent targets of Freeganism. We know from past experience Hank is willing and able to eat food from a dumpster if the need arises.”

“Or on a dare,” Dean added glumly.

Rusty tapped a finger to his chin thoughtfully. “Hey, you recruited Dermott Fictel, didn’t you? Is he stationed somewhere in the city? Hank probably flocked to him, their collective idiocy is like a lode magnet.”

“Buster brown and his hairy hollyknockers!” Gathers flung his hands up in irritation. “You already diverted OSI manpower for your family squabble, now you want a list of recruits? How about I hand you a list of all the secret missile bases while I'm at it? Alphabetized sound okay?”

Rusty squared off. “Hey, you idiots let the guild kidnap me to Meteor Majure, you owe me.”

“We don’t owe you diddly-squat you cantankerous mama’s boy!” Gather’s held a pointer finger out like a sword. “You made the telepad that allowed them to do that in the first place!”

“Hey, hey, we don’t need to do that.” Brock materialized between them like a blond wall. “Look, it’s Hank out there. We need to concentrate on finding him before he does something really dumb.”

Both men drew back, chastened.

The rescue group broke into factions to discuss individual plans of action. Pete followed Billy out to the yard, catching a knowing wink from Shoreleave just before the sliding glass door shut.

Billy, looking unusually solemn and contemplative, draped himself over the retaining wall. “Hank’sch really gone, isn’t he?”

“Right? It just doesn’t seem like a thing that can happen.” White arranged himself beside Billy, chin cupped in hand. “It’s Hank, I'm sure he’ll be fine.”

“But what if he isn’t?”

Both men reflected on it.

“In retroschpect, thisch is probably a long time coming.” Billy massaged the skin beneath his eyepatch. “Hank needsch to grow up, and to really do that he needsch to leave home. It’sch what I did.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have a head injury. Plus, you have a bit more on the ball than ol’ Hankster.”

Billy chuckled, shaking his head. “I thought I did. I thought all my trivial knowledge prepared me for the real world. But I was wrong.”

“But you did okay.”

“That’sch because I met you.”

“Oh.” Pete hadn’t ever heard anyone refer to association with him as anything that positive. His first instinct was to deflect. “But I made plenty of mistakes too.”

“We both did. But we made the bescht ones when we were together.”

White took a steadying breath and put his hand out like a satellite drifting out into unknown space. It found Billy’s hand, warm and dry, and got drawn into his grip.

“Plus Hank’s got kind of a lone wolf thing going on,” Brock said, lighting up a cigarette.

The other two started.

“Jeschus!”

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” Brock regarded them, slight upturn in his eyes the only indicator of his mood. “So you two are…” he gestured vaguely.

“Yeah, we are.” Billy gestured irritably back at him.

Brock finally smiled, blowing twin dragons of smoke from his nostrils. “Good. I’m glad. I had a feeling when I dropped you off at the trailer that you’d be headed this way.”

“Oh yeah, regular matchmaker Brock Samson,” Billy said dryly.

“I mean it. You two idiots need each other.” Brock took a drag. “And the Doc needs friends. You two are the only people around here that he doesn’t put on a show for.”

“What about you?” White asked.

“Ah.” Brock rolled his shoulders. “I can’t be around as much as he needs me to be, especially now. You keep him human. You and the boys.”

White licked his lips, weighing whether to say something. “He...appreciates you, you know that, right?”

Brock regarded him with hooded eyes. “...I know,” he allowed.

“I mean it. He’s...appreciated you for a long time, I think. Since college.”

Brock chuckled. “Yeah, I forget about that sometimes. Doc’s not so good at showing appreciation, especially when it’s some bitter damn medicine. But I know in the end…” he trailed off, stubbing out his cigarette. “I’m going in. Take your time out here, I'm sure they’ll be a while.”

The glass door slid open, revealing the opera of a shouting match between Rusty and Gathers before it closed again, muffling the sound.

The two remained behind, blinking.

“White?”

“Yeah?”

“Ruschty has a crush on Brock?”

“Rusty is practically Mrs. Sampson, Billy, has been for years.”

“How have I not noticed this?”

“You didn’t notice—” White pinched that thought off. He wasn’t going to remind Billy of he and Rusty’s past, not now.

Billy grinned. “I didn’t notice what, huh? Talk or I'll get it out of you.”

“Nuh-uh, nothing.” White realized he was still holding Billy’s hand. No one in the penthouse was looking out to see them, so he didn't draw away. “What are you going to do anyway?”

Billy grinned rakishly. He grabbed White by his lapels and pressed a kiss on him.

White’s face flamed with heat. “Billy, don’t—they’re right there!”

“Or what?” Billy pressed another kiss on him, and another, taking a little longer every time. “What.” kiss. “Are you.” kiss. “Going.” kiss. “To do?”

“I’m,” Pete managed against Billy’s mouth, and that was all. He cupped the back of Billy’s head and kissed him back, only sneaking occasional sidelong glances at the penthouse. No one was looking out at them, engrossed in an argument that had blossomed into Rusty and Gathers flailing in each other’s general direction while Brock and Shoreleave held them back. When the pair slid back in moments later, their ruffled hair and clothing went quite unnoticed in the chaos.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the week-long break in between chapters, real life stuff superseded writing for a while.


	9. Opposites Attract

The search party walked down the street two abreast; Shoreleave and the Alchemist in front, Pete and Billy straggling behind.

“This is great. We don’t have any couple friends,” Al was saying, glancing back at the pair. “I am so stoked to move up here, be honest.”

“I know, sweetie, but just remember that I'm still OSI, I can’t just call off for movie night.” It was weird, seeing the two of them together. Shoreleave was tender, almost maternal, with none of his scathing wit in evidence. Pete had wondered, when he first saw them, what the statuesque soldier saw in short, dowdy Al. But seeing them interact in public put all the pieces together neatly. Al’s sweetness worked as a balm on Shoreleave, softening his edges.

Pete looked down at Billy, who was squinting at a paper street map. A stab of sudden fondness hit him in the gut, and he looked away quickly. Gingerly, he put his hand out, slowly traveling closer and closer until he made contact with Billy. Without even looking up from the map, Billy enfolded Pete’s hand with his own.

“Anyone else hungry? We’ve been out here three hours already, and I have the biggest craving for scallion pancakes.” Shoreleave thumbed over at a restaurant called Hunan Palace.

“Oh. My god. Twinsies!” Al said in that singsong way of his.

“Hey, we’re not on a double date,” Billy piped up suddenly, “we’re a schearch and rescue party. A four-man tracking army.”

“Yeah? Well an army marches on its stomach.” Shoreleave held the door open for Al, giving it a courtesy flip to White, who smiled sheepishly at Billy’s glare.

“It’s just lunch, Billy, aren’t you hungry?”

Billy’s anger softened. “Yeah, I guesch. But let’s not take too long, okay?”

Four dim sum dishes in, White had completely forgotten what they had been doing.

“—so we tell the guy that the ‘gold treasure’ he’s been sitting on is iron pyrite. Fools gold!”

Shoreleave cackled, pounding the table so that the pork buns jumped. “Honey, you are a masterful bitch. Was he mad?”

“Oh savage. But not as mad as the people whose treasure is knowledge. I have seen that so many times and lemme tell ya, you will never see someone more pissed off than a deadbeat with a brain inheritance.”

Billy snorted. “Well yeah, I can schee where they’re coming from. You can’t pay schtudent loansch with wisdom.”

“Oh yeah, and just try funding your protease inhibitor research with forgotten lore.” Al poured himself a little more tea, cooling it with a mystic gesture. “Backers are all about secret astrology calendars from Sumeria, or that time George Washington shat on a swan.”

Billy choked a little on his icewater. “He what?”

“Long story short, it was a potshot at England. But anyway, what’s new with you two? I see you are finally down to showing affection in public, that’s cute, that’s very cute.” Al put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on the backs of his hands.

Pete gulped, throat knotting up at being put on the spot. Luckily Billy rushed to fill the void.

“Oh yeah, we’re working our way up to the big schtuff. Pete and I are both naturally private, scho we’re taking it schlowly.” Billy took out a pen and clicked it over the child’s menu they had mistakenly brought him. “Actually, I was wondering if you two had any pointersch for us.”

While Pete hid, mortified, behind his hand, Al gave Shoreleave a look.

“Oh my god, he’s taking notes. You told me they’d be cute, but you didn’t prepare me for this.”

“Right? Okay sweetie, here’s the lowdown: you are stepping into a warzone known as public gay life. From now on, expect aggro from all quarters. Probably start carrying around a sockful of quarters, or a lot of quarters and an extra sock. Makes an effective cosh, and easily to explain away to police.”

“Oh don’t, you’re scaring the boy.” Al jostled Shoreleave with his elbow.

“Sock...quarters…” Billy muttered, writing with his tongue in the corner of his mouth.

Pete covered his face with both hands and groaned. When he let his fingers fall away, he saw both Al and Shoreleave looking at him.

“What about you, White Lightning?” Shoreleave swirled his straw in his drink. “How you holding up?”

White thought he detected a note of genuine concern in that question. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

“It’s weird,” he admitted, “and I'm not used to it.” he twiddled his uneaten shumai with a single chopstick. “Look, it just feels like everyone else had a headstart on this...thing and I'm playing catch-up.”

Al drizzled soy sauce onto his complementary rice, the only thing left untouched on his plate. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, it happened to me, too. Back when I was first coming out, Phineas the Fortunate was all, _‘waaah, I knew Alexander the great, you young kids today don’t know the meaning of the word sodomy.’”_ he dropped his voice to the back of his throat to give his impression a phlegmy twang.

“Phineas the Fortunate? Is he another mystic crime-fighter?”

_“Was_ a mystic crime-fighter. Apparently the mythical waters of Nooy are no match for autoimmune diseases.” Al raised his teacup. “God rest his bitchy soul.”

“Scho you probably know a lot of people who died during the AIDS crisis?” Billy’s face was troubled.

“Oh, tons. Wrap it before you tap it, kids.”

“How are you not totally bitter about it? I mean, I would be if all my friends died.”

Al sighed. “Bitter? Oh, yeah, I'm still really frickin’ salty about the whole deal, believe me, but if there’s one thing I learned while fairies were dropping like flies, it was that I couldn’t let it stop me from trying to make the world a better place. Nothing ever changes if you just sulk in your room about the injustices of the world, kiddo.”

Billy had a gleam in his eye. “I agree SO HARD With that schtatement.”

Shoreleave gave a knowing look to White, who felt an odd sort of camaraderie with the soldier at long last. Here he was, in public with a giant-headed manchild, a balding man in an upsettingly vivid hawaiian shirt, and a sailor who probably pinged gadar from outer space...and he felt at ease, he realized. He finally felt that he kind of, you know, fit somehow.

“Another round of scallion pancakes?” Pete smiled at their aye-aye.

~`~`~`~

_U.N. Science Expo of Yesteryear_

“...can’t believe he brought a growth ray. A growth ray! Like we wouldn’t notice that the watermelon was fake and he was inflating it.” Billy took an aggressive swig and spilled coke down the front of his shirt. “Aw, great. Why don’t they ever have schtraws at this conference?”

“Maybe because only kids drink with straws, Billy?” White had fetched a napkin and was dabbing the stain ineffectively.

“Scho? There are kids here.” Billy squinted as the full implication of that statement hit him. “Oh har-de-har-har, the boy geniusch needs to drink from a schilly schtraw. These cups are completely the wrong shape for someone with my condition to drink out of, White, the mouth is too damn narrow.”

White glanced down at his own Tom Collins, untouched since he’d gotten it half an hour ago. “Well...you kinda got me there, Billy.”

Billy dropped his hands, squinting across the room. “Hold on, is that…” he sucked in his breath in a hiss. “That douche.”

White followed his gaze to find the awkward figure of Rusty Venture, trying to coax two primary-school-aged boys from a decorative fountain while his statuesque bodyguard looked on. A pit formed in his stomach. He tugged futily on Billy’s arm.

“Now pally, don’t go rushing off half-cocked, I'm sure Rusty is real sorry about what he did.”

“Oh, he’s about to be.” Billy pulled from White’s grasp and stalked across the room.

“Hank, if you don’t let go of Neptune’s beard and come down by the time I count to five, you are going to be in serious trouble, mister.” Rusty tapped his foot. “One. Two. Three. Four….four and a half...four and three quarters…”

Billy stalked up, White trailing him like a pale shadow. “Ruschty Venture, I thought I recognized your foul stench when I wasch brought on board.”

“Yes, yes, Dean had a little accident but we’re dealing with it.” Rusty hastily waved him away without even looking. “Dean, daddy promises he’s not mad at you but we need to get you new pants.”

Dean, huddled behind the tail of Neptune’s seahorse, shook his head.

Rusty’s bodyguard stepped up and unceremoniously hooked both boys from the fountain with his massive hands. The boys crowed with delight, rebellion forgotten.

“Yes, thank you Brock,” Rusty said peevishly, “but I was trying to get them down through sheer parental discipline.” He turned and did a double-take. “Hey you’re...White, buddy, it’s good to see you!”

Any lingering traces of irritation washed away when Rusty slapped him on the back.

“And this is your little...boy.” He adjusted his glasses, squinting. “You’ve gotten so big!”

“By 1.3 centimetersch, but that’sch neither here nor there,” Billy said dryly, folding his arms. “How’sch the science expo, _Doc?”_

If Rusty noticed the venom in Billy’s tone, he didn’t show it. “This is great. My first expo in ages and I run into like minds. That jackass Impossible wanted to rescind my standing invitation due to inactivity, so I had to come empty-handed. How about you?”

“Oh, this voice-commanded printer.” White former a tube with his hand. “Between us, it’s just the guts of a Halcyon we tweaked a bit. It’s mostly empty box.”

“Correction: schtreamlined empty box.” Billy’s pride temporarily overrode his irritation. “I did the design schpecsch.”

White glanced from Brock, wrangling two squirming children, to Billy, lost in his satisfaction. Not even a smidgeon of recognition.

White caught sight of himself in Brock’s mirrored sunglasses and dropped his gaze.

“We have to get a drink, catch up.” Rusty spoke over his shoulder. “Brock, could you take the boys back to the room?”

“Fine, I gotta get Dean new pants anyway.” Brock plucked Hank from his shoulder like an errant flea. “Come on boys, we get to ride the science elevator again.”

The boys threw their arms up and yelled “yay!”

Rusty watched them go, chuckling. “We told them it was a science elevator just because it has glass walls.”

Billy squinted. “Well, you know what they schay about people who live in houschesch with glassch wallsch.”

Rusty blinked. “What, is that a dig about privacy? Is my crack showing?” He made an unsuccessful attempt to look behind himself.

White sighed. “Rust, we’re still kinda miffed about you turning us down for a job.”

“What, that? That was ages ago.” Rusty looked from Billy, who had gone into full disapproving mom stare, to White, who was frowning and shaking his head. “Look, it worked out just fine. You two have your own company, right? What would you want to work for _‘the man’_ for?” he said, hooking finger quotes around the phrase.

“Oh I don’t know, financial schtability?” Billy glared.

“It wasn’t just what you did, it was the way you did it. All flippant, like we didn’t mean anything.”

Rusty’s face fell to shame for a split-second before that shiteating grin made a comeback. “Okay, yeah, you caught me at a bad time. Let’s make up for it now, get a partnership going.”

Which was as close to a real apology as they would get from Rusty Venture.

“Partnerschip? With what? We have hot new designs that will take the scientific community by schtorm, what do you have?” Billy prodded him with his robotic hand.

Rusty lifted an eyebrow. “....financing?”

The trio exchanged a look.

“Buddy!” White threw an arm around Rusty’s shoulders. “Let’s get that drink.”

~`~`~`~

_VenTech tower, penthouse_

White knew, instinctively, that they were stepping into a bad scene. There was the muffled sound of things being thrown or overturned they could hear from the elevator, and the sharp sting of cigarette smoke once they stepped into the front hall.

“—and what are you doing while this was going on, huh? Playing soldiers, knocking down a bunch of noname mooks while my son—”

“—Jeez, you think I _wanted_ this to happen? I love those boys, but I can’t be there every hour of the day for them.”

“Oh do you, Brock? Do you? Because I feel like your loyalties lie with the Junior Jackass brigade more than us.”

“Look, I did that for your benefit—”

“Lies! Lies from a lying liar!”

“—they wanted to wipe you and sterilize the whole operation. I told them you’d play ball, you didn’t need to be given the Wilhelm Reich treatment. I saved you, Doc. Look, you may not like my methods, but everything I do is for your safety.”

“That is word-for-word what my father said to me when he made me go bivouacking with the Action Man, and you know what? It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now!”

A sigh. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say that you’ll find him.” Rusty sounded close to tears. “I want you to say that he’ll be alright, Brock. I want you to say that _we’ll_ be alright.”

Pete glanced over at Billy, who was frowning.

“Chrischt, this is like lischtening to your parents fighting,” he murmured.

Pete found his hand and held it.

“I can’t promise everything, Doc. I can promise I'll do my best, that I'll look the hardest I've ever looked for anything in my life.”

“But what good does that do me if he’s…” Rusty’s voice finally broke. “No do-overs. No backups Brock. We’re not on the home turf anymore. He’s...he’s sheltered. What if he gets into drugs, or gangs? What if he just gets run down just crossing the street?”

“He’s not gonna die from jaywalking, doc. He’s got crazy stupid luck, he always has.”

“Luck runs out, Brock.”

Another sigh. “I know. Look, I need a cigarette. Do you mind—”

“Go ahead.”

Billy and Pete waited until they heard the snap of the sliding glass door closing before they dared enter the living room.

Rusty was hunched-over on the couch, rubbing his temples. He glanced up, momentarily hopeful before he saw who it was. Like he was expecting Hank. White felt a modicum of guilt at their lunch, productive as it was.

“Oh hi.” Rusty sounded drained. “No joy?”

“Not really.” Billy walked over and put a hand on Rusty’s shoulder. “We’ll find him, okay? It’sch Hank. He can’t go a single day without doing an over-the-top schtunt like he’s freaking Batman.”

Rusty smiled. Or at least, the corners of his mouth turned up. He covered Billy’s hand in his own. “Thanks. I hate to be a worrywart, but…”

Pete shook his head. “Ya don’t have to explain yourself to us, Rust. We get it.”

Off on the patio, he saw the solemn figure of Brock, hunched over in the same way as the Doc was, hot cherry glowing between his fingertips. He puffed away on the cigarette like a man taking in oxygen from a tank.

Rusty ground his free fingertips into his eyes. “I should be more grateful. I mean, he did get the OSI to help search with us, in exchange for some nominal technology favors, but I just...I can’t. Why the hell can’t I ever...” the frustration in his voice pitched it up at the end. He removed the black framed from his eyes and let them drop into his lap.

White stared down at him. “This is about more than Hank, Rust.”

Rusty looked up at White, sans glasses, face naked with despair.

“Is it that obvious?” he murmured.

White smiled. “To me.”

Rusty slid a hand over his bald dome. He put his glasses back on. “I need to...I'm going to go apologize to Brock. Then I think I need a nap, I didn’t really sleep at all last night and I'm...sorry.” He stood up.

White had time to marvel at how Rusty had changed since they first met in college. He really had. Despite retaining an outer shell of entitled adolescent rage, Rusty really had...matured, in a way. Grief had a habit of doing that to you.

Grief and love.

White looked at Billy, who was gazing out at the patio.

“Whaddya say we hit central park?”

Billy smiled. “Schoundsch good to me. I’m getting the replica proton pack, he loved the schound it made on ignition, maybe that’ll draw him out.”

“I’ll get some of those handwarmer packs,” White said, pressing the call button, “and those gloves your mom got us, the ones you can use on a touchscreen?”

“Oh thank god, my handsch were going numb out there.”

They disappeared into the elevator from whence they came.

~`~`~`~

_U.N. Science Expo of Yesteryear_

Pete White felt something solid run into his leg.

“Hi.”

He looked down to see a little blond boy grabbed onto his knee.

“Are you a ghost? Do you have crazy ghost powers? I’m a Ghostbuster and I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost,” the little boy declared.

Meanwhile, Dean timidly approached Billy. “Hi. Are you a giant boy detective?”

Billy squinted. “Am I what?”

“Giant boy detective. Like my book.” Dean shyly held up a Wee-Can-Read edition of _Giant Boy Detective vs Encyclopedia Brown._

Billy smiled fondly. “Aww. Close, little guy. I am a quizboy.”

“What’s that?” Dean’s finger wandered into his nostril.

“Like a giant boy detective, but my myschtery is the neverending purschuit of wisdom.”

“Bo-ring.” Hank said, still hanging from White’s knee. “Batman is a detective, his mystery is punching bad guys. Batman is way cooler.”

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

“IS NOT!”

“IS SO!”

“Boysch! Boysch!” Billy waved his hands. “It doeschn’t matter who’sch cooler or not, you don’t have to be a giant boy detective if you don’t want to.”

Hank’s smile climbed a few centimeters. “I don’t?”

“Heck no. My mom wanted me to have a quiet and schafe desk job. But ya know what?” Billy thumbed at his own chest. “I grew up and became my own man. No deschk job for me, I purschue science wherever and whenever I want.”

“Cool!” both boys shouted.

“Oh, don’t go giving them ideas.” A fussiness White had never seen in college took over Rusty. “Daddy’s got a plan for your futures, boys, you don’t have to worry about that. Now stop bothering daddy’s friends, he’s having grownup time.”

The boys exchanged a look. “You have _friends,_ pop?”

Rusty growled low in his throat. “Bro~ock, can you come fetch the boys? They’re being pests again.”

“Hey, I'm always happy to mentor a budding schientischt.” Billy bent low and shook Dean’s hand.

White looked over at Hank, whose mouth was downturned.

“And you, pally? Are you going to be a scientist like your daddy?”

Hank shook his head. “I’m gonna be Batman.”

White chuckled indulgently, patting his head. “Sure ya are, kiddo. Sure ya are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never mentioned it, but it's my personal headcanon that Billy's father was a fellow crimefighter that died on the job, and that's why Rose is so protective of him. Also, that Al came of age just as the AIDS crisis began, and he became fed up at all the other practitioners of the mystic arts that weren't using their powers for practical applications and decided to do something about it. I love Al, he's one of my favorite characters next to Shoreleave.


	10. On the Tip of Everyone's Tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mild, goofy sex scenes in this chapter

They did not find Hank that day. They did not find Hank that week, or the next week. A horrible pit formed in White’s stomach, the feeling of  _ this is it, this is what it’s going to be from now on. _ He hated change. He’d always hated it because it had never brought anything positive to his life.

Rusty had withdrawn, grown quieter.  No more of the snappish short temper, or his chummy, wheedling good humor. The pall drifted down the whole tower, all the way to the ground floor where Hatred wore a black armband. Dean had abandoned the tower for school. R&D was practically a ghost town, inhabited only when they needed to use the microwave.

White hated the boredom. He hated it because he felt useless when there was nothing to do...well, more useless than usual. 

Billy had slowed down the progression of their relationship at the exact wrong time. He probably thought he was giving White some much-needed space, but if any time White needed to have his brains distracted by frequent sexual adventuring, it was a time like this.

White gnawed his lip, watching the back of Billy’s neck. Just watching. Billy was on the couch,  _ Tuff Turf  _ playing on the flatscreen. Thought he would deny it to his last breath, Billy had an ongoing crush on vintage James Spader. And, if he was being painfully honest, so did White. He crept up behind Billy sitting unaware, fingers dug into yet another bowl of kettle corn.

_ “Do whatever it is that you know is right. That you believe in. That's all. And feel good about it.” _

White maneuvered himself so that he was a hair’s breadth from the back of Billy’s neck. He held his breath so that his presence was hidden.

_ “Look, son. Life isn't a problem to be solved. It's a mystery to be lived. So live it.” _

Billy sighed, looking wistfully at the screen. In one swift stroke, White brushed his lips along the back of Billy’s neck. Billy cricked at the knees, tensing his back and yelping.

“Yeeeeesh!” he heaved forward, clutching his chest. Darting his gaze backward, he caught White sank guiltily down behind the couch. “What the hell dude? Was that a lizard?”

“Um, no. that was my mouth.” his ego deflated neatly.

“Oh.” Billy blinked. “Dude, you need to start using that Eos I got you, you are chapped to hell.”

“Girls use lip balm.”

“Yeah, yeah, and men have mouths like rawhide chews.” Billy pulled him closer and fumbled in his front coat pocket. 

“Erm, that’s a little far north.”

Billy ignored him, uncapping the eucalyptus mint balm and bidding him closer with a crook of the finger. He swiped White’s lips, upper and lower, before capping it again. He held White at a medium distance by his upper arms, surveying his handiwork.

“Better?” White asked.

Billy nodded gleefully, pulling him in for a kiss. White placed a steadying hand on the small of his back, letting himself melt into the embrace.

They had done nothing more R-rated than a few makeout sessions, some heavy petting, and one disastrous attempt at foreplay. White was trying to gradually work through his terror of screwing up in some unspeakable fashion, irrational though it was, and hurting Billy. Intimacy had always terrified him, and now that it came to something that really mattered, it was twice as terrifying.

~`~`~`~

_ The Venture compound _

The unspoken agreement was no eye contact. Rusty stayed in one chair, White in the other, the tissues on the desk between them.

Tonight’s guest musician was something beginning with B. Bunny or Bubble, or possibly even Bonnie. She looked like a Bonnie, with hair dyed a light strawberry blonde that turned mouse brown at the roots. Easily a DD cup. She was already warming up for the evening’s concerto, her sizable chest produced some melodic tones as she was manhandled into the room.

Brock was in rare form, already stripped down to his boxers before he was two steps in the door. Everything was big on Brock. Everything, from the pinky he slipped into her mouth, to his own mouth suctioning to the curve of one breast freed from her handkerchief top, to the monster currently tenting the front of his underwear. 

White grabbed another handful of Dermasil (never the good stuff, not for Rusty) and sucked in his lower lip.

Brock was wasting no time tonight, gathering her at an angle between the wall and the bed, taking up a firm grip on her legs mid-knee and pressing into her as smoothly as he shifted gears in the Dodge Charger. At this odd angle, the view was mostly Brock’s magnificent hindquarters flexing as he thrust into her. Rusty was not opposed to the view. White could tell by the intake of breath and increased tempo beside him that Rusty had hit his stride. White could not imagine the path that led from Rusty being thrashed in their old dorm room to his lustful coveting of his bodyguard’s physique. He suspected that Rusty had a touch of masochism in him after so many years of being tied up and threatened. White was just enjoying the view, Brock ruthlessly heaving into warm and willing flesh with an abandon White knew he would never possess. It was safer to watch than to try, because White knew he would screw up. He always did. 

Rusty hooked two fingers in a tissue and finished, gasping, into the crumpled surface. He always finished first on these nights, left White racing to catch up. Rusty’s pant slowed and he gripped the chair arm, fingertips dimpling the black pleather. He kept his eyes on the screen despite having spent himself, his gaze carefully following the hulking form of his bodyguard. 

White turned his head to the side and closed his eyes, summoning a montage cobbled together from daytime television hostesses, softcore actresses, and a few cashiers he thought were easy on the eyes. He thought of them running, bending over, smiling, dancing, doing yoga, a blurry panorama of benign lust. Christ, it was taking forever.

Unbidden, he thought of Billy. Billy thought he was helping with a computer virus on Rusty’s laptop (and he really should get to that after this) and sat, unsuspecting at home. He was probably playing Wii sports, tongue tucked in the corner of his mouth, swinging the Wiimote like a tennis racket. He always took every game so seriously, like he really was battling for the fate of the world. White pictured him: bent posture as if he really were squaring off against Andre Agassi, face screwed up in determination, cursing softly every time the computer sailed one past him—

White whimpered, crumpling a tissue over his orgasm as if immediately hiding it from sight negated it.

White panted, looking around guiltily. Rusty was relaxing now, laying sidelong in his office chair, head pillowed by his hand. His face was inscrutable in the green glow from the monitor bank, glasses gone opaque and reflecting Brock gingerly removing himself from BunnyBubble/Bonnie’s person. White reflected on how much he did not know Rusty, not really. Their friendship operated in comfortably shallow waters, avoiding the shoal of deeper spiritual introspection. It only bothered him in times like this, where Rusty had neatly shut him out without so much as a word. It only served to remind White of how expendable he really was.

White got up, tugging his tights back in place. “Let’s see that laptop.”

~`~`~`~

_ VenTech tower _

White pulled away. “Sorry.”

Billy bit his lip, disappointed. “Schorry?”

White looked down, nodding. “Yeah, I…” he gestured below his waist.

Billy sighed. “You and your pschychoschexual hangups, White.”

“I know, I know.” He felt a needling stab in his heart. “I got guilt dick, Billy. What can I say?”

“I get it. We’re all worried about Hank.”

White kept his guilty silence. It wasn’t Hank, it didn’t even start with Hank, the line of excuses ended with Hank and wrapped around the block twice. It was congenital guilt dick. Terminal guilt dick. Guilt dick that he did not want to spread to Billy.

Instead, he pressed Billy back to the couch cushions with a kiss.

“Be right back.”

“Are you going to get some guilt-viagra?” Billy smirked.

“What, is that like a communal wafer?” White grinned, sweeping Billy’s hair back from his forehead. “I just need some air, and then I’ll be back.”

“No coke!” Billy reminded from the couch.

“Yeah, yeah,” White reposted jovially. He bit his knuckle. Damn, so much for plan B.

He wasn’t even sure where he was going, so he just rode the elevator all the way to the top. He had only a vague idea about talking to Rusty making him feel better, which seemed counterintuitive. Talking to Rusty made him feel worse, usually, and ended with him tamping his feelings down even tighter. But Rusty was someone he knew for sure was cheering for both of them, perhaps…

White did not get to finish that thought. He took one step off the elevator and into the sounds of Rusty grunting and gasping in effort. Immediately, White flattened himself against the wall.

Shit, shit, shit. What was the protocol here? He never listened at safety meetings. Was he supposed to call Hatred? The pirate guy? What the hell did he say?

White swept his hair from his face and tried to think. Dean was down at school right now, and barring some OSI thing Brock was probably—

White had a sudden bolt of intuition. Sidling along the wall, he peeked around the corner into the conversation pit. He probably hadn’t needed all the stealth.

Brock was knelt on the couch, completely nude. On his back, with his legs in the vicinity of Brock’s shoulders, was Rusty. Neither man even glanced in the direction of the front hall or White, focused entirely on the press of their bodies together. 

White tactfully withdrew to the elevator.

Billy was still on the couch, engrossed in the Shatneresque fight scene between James Spader and Paul Mones. “That was quick.”

“Yeah, ah.” White cleared his throat. “I got a different problem now.”

Billy turned. White gestured helplessly to the front of his leggings, now painfully tented.

Billy grinned rakishly. “The doctor is in.”

White bit his lip to suppress a grin. “Could we not play doctor? It’s creepy.”

“Oh no it isn’t. Turn your head and cough.” Billy threw him into the couch.

White squirmed, trying not to giggle. If there was one thing he knew concretely about sex, it was that giggling shouldn’t be involved. But Billy was laughing too, chasing White as he tried to evade his hands and smothering the laughter between their lips.

White felt his waistband slip over his erection, a relief as the cool air flowed over his heated flesh. Something even cooler covered him suddenly. White yelped.

“Your bionic hand? No, Billy, that’s—” White bucked as it suddenly began moving.

“Aww, come on.” Billy grinned crookedly, “you’ll get used to it. Schometimes I shut off the schenschors and give myself a schtranger. It’sch great, like getting a handjob from a robot.”

White pressed his lips together, trying to stifle laughter. Goddamnit, sex should not be funny. Laughter was a sign you were doing something wrong, whether it be failing to get a bra off or just having a body like a bar of soap. But Billy was laughing against his neck, skimming with his lips, and the vibration felt pretty damn good. White couldn’t stop giggling at the faces Billy made, he was ticklish at the chill of Billy’s prosthetic hand, and he just couldn’t stop picturing the two of them together. They probably looked ridiculous, Billy pressing himself all over White like a stunted honeybee, White with his translucent-pale complection being worked over by a cyborg hand...

...White realized he wasn’t picturing anything else. As ridiculous as the image of the two of them together probably was, he wasn’t thinking of some perfect-bodied pornstar to offset the image. He didn’t need to.

White swept his hands up the back of Billy’s thighs. Billy jolted into him, chuckling. White cry-laughed into Billy’s chest, writhing at the precise pressure of his robotic hand. He laughed as he came, curling like a shrimp around Billy and pressing his nose to the top of Billy’s head. 

Billy drew back, wiping some of the effluence from his hand’s surface. “Schit, I hope that doesn’t get in the gears. I should’ve worn a glove.”

“Wrap it before you tap it,” White reminded him. They both cracked up.

White flipped Billy over and pressed him into the couch, trailing kisses down Billy’s torso, sinking so he was level with Billy’s waist. He pressed forward—

—only to be stopped by Billy’s right hand.

“Wait.” Billy bit his lip. “I think...can we wait on that one? I mean, Al had a point here…”

“Oh yeah. Yeah, I understand.” Somber, White rose up.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t  _ want _ to—”

“Oh of course.”

“That juscht means—”

“I get it Billy. I do.” White knelt on the sofa, covering Billy’s body with his own. Billy put his head to White’s shoulder and sighed.

~`~`~`~

_ Rose Whalen’s Condo _

“More potatoes, Peter?”

“Nah, thanks Mrs. W.”

Billy’s mom tutted. “Call me Rose, dear. I inschischt.”

“Mom, if he has to call you Rose, you have to schtart calling him ‘Pete’.” Billy was chewing his way through lemon asparagus tips. “Nobody calls him ‘Peter’ except weirdos and villains.”

“Oh.” Rose’s hand covered her mouth. “Well, I hope you boys don’t run into too many of those.”

Billy snorted. “We run into those every week, ma. It’sch all part of The Life.”

“Well, ol’ Rosie is no stranger to that.” the Action man shifted in his chair, elbowing in Rose’s direction.

Billy’s face clouded in suspicion. “What does that mean?”

“Oh nothing.” Rose slapped at Rodney’s shoulder as if putting out a minor kitchen fire. “Juscht that he thinksch he always had to rescue me back in the day.”

“Well, ya had your share of abductions, Rosie real.” Horace Gentleman ticked off on his fingers. “Brainulo. Stupenda. Dr. Orthropus. It sheems like every other villain wanted to shcoop up those shapely calves.”

“Now Horace, you schtop that.” Rose looked stuck somewhere between flattery and consternation. “Everyone got kidnapped a lot in those daysch. None of this ‘hacking your bank account’ nonschensche. If you wanted schomeone’s money, you had to kidnap them face-to-face. Much more perschonal.”

“Did dad have to rescue you a lot?” Billy asked.

The question dropped like a conversational hand grenade. All three retirees sidled up to it, trying to judge whether they could just shove the pin back in.

“Schometimesch.” Rose swept imaginary crumbs from the table. “Oh but your father was schuch a gentle man, Billy, I never liked him to get into trouble for me.”

White chewed his veal piccata, thankful for the escape that food gave him. He had a feeling there was more to Rose than she let on, but Billy’s artlessly probing attempt at conversation went over about as successful as a census test on Hannibal Lecter.

“Hey,” he said too brightly, “I guess getting kidnapped kinda runs in the family, huh? I mean, every other week someone’s trying to nab Billy and I. Mostly Billy.”

“Oh.” Rose put her hands up to her cheeks. “My poor Billy.”

“Schut up,” Billy growled through clenched teeth at him.

White grinned sheepishly. But it seemed to have diffused the awkward tension that had sprung up in the room at the mention of Billy’s dad; tension, White realized, not unlike the kind that sprang up whenever they discussed Jonas Venture’s death. There was something more there, and if it was anywhere near as heartbreaking as what lie in wait for Rusty, he wanted to spare Billy.

Rodney grabbed Rose by the posterior (making Billy avert his eye) and hauled her into his lap. 

“Put it this way; Rose is just too dang sweet for her own good, and everybody wants a piece of that.”

“Oh Rodney.” Rose was trying not to laugh.

“What? It’s true.”

Billy shielded his face with his hand. “Can you believe those two?”

White grinned, tucking into his asparagus. “Yeah.”

“I juscht wish that you could, like, schedule kidnappings.” Billy tipped his asparagus in melted butter. “They always happen at  _ the worscht _ possible time. 

~`~`~`~

_ VenTech tower _

White kissed up and down Billy’s neck, traveling the soft planes of his stomach on the way down past his waistband. Billy moaned, clenching his hands in White’s hair. White sighed, kissing his brow just above the eyepatch he could never get Billy to incorporate into a Halloween costume no matter how much he begged. He could feel Billy’s excited dick in one hand, feel the smooth tautness as it brushed his hand, all he had to do—

Their room lit up with a sudden burst of floodlights, even their window blinds did nothing to stem the burst of photons. Both yelped and threw hands over their eyes. White could feel his skin tighten at the threat of the sunburn.

_ “Billy Quizboy and Peter White! Attend!” _

Billy nearly lowered his hand. “Oh god, you’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me—”

_ “I have come to even the score, I—Pei Wie, quit decorating that mural!” _

Thankfully, the light shut off. But on the downside, something crashed through the wall, obliterating it and letting in a stiff, cold breeze.

_ “Oh, dude, scheriously?” _ Billy had to shout over the noise. 

The intrusion turned out to be the gangplank of an airship. As the last of the drywall and brick fell away, it revealed Augustus St. Cloud in his villain regalia. Behind him, Pei Wie was dressed in pink robes and had shaved a monk’s tonsure in the middle of his head. He bowed before a mural made of different varieties of beans, like the kind White had made in third grade. The mural was a picture of Billy’s face. 

St. Cloud steadied himself on the handrails, looking a bit green around the gills. “Quizboy and Pilgrim, I have come to settle…” his voice trailed off as he took in the scene before him.

White glared at him, hand still snugly down the front of Billy’s pants. Billy glared, arms gripping the back of the sofa, shirt undone to show his nearly concave chest. White’s waistband was still down around mid-thigh, leaving him to shrink in the sudden cold wind.

St. Cloud turned quite red. “Um...bad time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have never subjected yourself to Tuff Turf, by all means do. That is some vintage 80's cheese. Bonus: baby Robert Downey jr.


	11. Who can it be now?

_Ventech Tower_

Pete White sat on the reception desk, one elbow cupped in his other hand, legs crossed casually as he leaned against the Ipod-White surface.

“You hit like a girl, Quizboy.”

“Takesch one to know one, St. Clown.”

Hatred grimaced. “Should I call someone?”

“Eh, don’t bother. They’ll run out of steam soon enough.” White stifled a yawn. He had thrown on a coat to cover any stains he might have missed with a cursory glance, swapping out his tights for a pair of sweatpants. Billy had donned the bottom half of his pj’s and a hoodie, which made his pugilistic bobbing-and-weaving all the more ridiculous. St. Cloud had thankfully shed his cloud hat, but retained his cape which kept snagging on the potted plants by the entryway. Pei Wie had propped his bean mural of Billy against the side of the escalator and now sat in lotus position before it.

“Okay, what the hell is going on in my lobby?” Rusty winced as he exited the elevator, walking with a slight limp. He wore boxers and a thin white tee beneath his striped bathrobe, an outfit anyone would wear when roused from sleep in the middle of the night. Not suspicious in the slightest. Brock, behind him, was dressed in his requisite blue turtleneck and slacks. Nothing unusual, move along now.

White smirked to himself a bit.

“Billy, why are you roughhousing a shareholder?” Rusty leaned around the dueling Quizboy. “I’m so sorry, he gets so persnickety sometimes.”

“I-I am not perschnickety!” Billy dropped his guard to point a finger shaking with umbrage at Rusty. “I am damn mad and this douche-stain has gotten on my lascht nerve!”

“It is I who have reason for outrage, Quizboy,” St. Cloud sneered. “You have corrupted my albino. Now he spends all day setting joss sticks in front of that ridiculous portrait.”

“That does not give you the right to come burschting in right when we were—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Pete pushed himself into the middle of their circle of aggro, waving his hands before Billy said something he wasn’t ready to air in public. “Okay, we did god-gas him a little. But that was a self-defense measure because you friggin’ kidnapped me!”

“I was making you an offer, White.”

“I woke up on a goddamn zeppelin in clothes I was not wearing when I passed out. What the hell do you call that if not kidnapping?”

“You’re weird, St. Cloud, schick and weird.” Billy fenced him back with an outheld pointer finger. “I’m reporting you to the guild. You’re not even arching usch anymore, you’re fulfilling schome schick fetish!”

“Slow your roll there, little guy.” Brock stepped in, putting a fatherly hand on Billy’s back.

Rusty rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “It’s too goddamn late for this. Can you guys put your little meeting off for another day? My son is missing and I...I just can’t right now.”

Billy and White both looked down and murmured something apologetic.

“I think not, Rusty Venture.” St. Cloud stabbed at them with a finger. “I have full guild dispensation to arch these two.”

Rusty crossed his arms. “Yeah...no.”

“No?”

Rusty looked unimpressed. “Guild bylaw 2.147. Pete and Billy are under my employ, making this a sub-arch. You’re not subject to the same privileges as a full arch, you waived that when you sold them to me.”

“Way to go Rust!” Pete said as Billy cheered.

“I see. We will discuss the ramifications of your decisions at the next shareholders meeting,” St. Cloud drawled, adjusting his spectacles.

“Well, let’s not go that far,” Rusty hastily backtracked. “I don’t see why...we...should…” he trailed off, looking at something outside. Pete turned and followed his gaze.

Through the darkened glass of the lobby windows, they could see a striking figure in gold who drove another figure before him at the end of an outstretched arm. Everyone in the lobby gaped as the Monarch rapped prissily on the glass doors with his metallic glove. Hatred darted forward with his ring of keys.

The Monarch stepped lively, gold heels clicking on the tile floor as he miliary-marched his captive over to the group.

“Take him, take him _now,”_ the Monarch growled through gritted teeth, thrusting the mustachioed young man he held by the shoulder at the Venture clan.

“I do not, how you say, comprende. I am Enrico Matassa—”

“Shutup!” the Monarch’s impressive brows met like a grassfire. “If I hear you say one more word in that sub-Taco-Bell burrito you call an accent—”

Doc’s eyes had been narrowing behind his glasses, now they sprang wide as the Monarch ripped the sad caterpillar passing as a mustache off his captive’s lip.

“Owww! That was spirit gummed on!” he yelled in a decidedly un-Enrico-like voice.

“Hank?” Rusty’s voice cracked. _“Hank?”_

Hank scuffed the tile with his shoe. “Hey pop.”

“Dennis the Menace turned up at my doorstep pretending he was a z-lister looking to become a henchman. 21 kept sneaking him sandwiches, otherwise he probably would have been home much sooner. Keep a better handle on your hellish drop next time, Venture.”

Rusty did not reply. He was staring at his son, who currently slumped like he was trying to hide behind himself.

White watched a rapid series of emotions flash over Rusty’s face: fear, love, and overwhelming fury. Rusty charged forward, swatting at Hank like he was a biting fly.

“HENRY! ALLAN! VENTURE! Do you have ANY idea how grounded you are? You are banished to your room for the next decade! I’m writing your grounding into my will! It’s going to be sixty years before you see actual daylight! I’m going to start a foundation dedicated to making sure you never go out on another weekend again! Do you hear me?” he timed his words with his slaps. “DO! YOU! HEAR! ME!”

He stopped, hands still on Hank’s shoulders. Then, abruptly, he crumpled Hank to his chest, shaking. Brock stepped in, looming like a protective wall mountain over father and son.

The Monarch frowned like he’d bitten into a lemon. “Gay,” he pronounced, turning on his heel.

Rusty sniffed, blinking away tears. “Thank you, Malcolm.”

“Don’t!” the Monarch turned back, finger held out like a sabre. “Don’t use that name! Don’t assume familiarity, Dr. Venture. We remain and shall remain the bitterest of enemies.”

Rusty smiled at him. “Thanks.”

The Monarch chewed his lip like he wanted to say something further, but stalked out of the VenTech lobby instead.

“Hellooo?” a bored monotone cut through the moment. St. Cloud stepped up. “I believe we still have issue here. Your lackeys have corrupted my albino, he’s useless to me now.”

Pei Wie rose on one leg, the other still tucked lotus-fashion into his hip. _No one’s albino_ , he signed, _one cannot own people._

White squinted at Pei Wie. “Ah yeah, pally, I don’t think he’s interested in the job anymore.”

_You have shown me the way, you and Billy of the large head full of wisdom._

“Look, you’re gonna have to get it through your head that you can’t just own people.”

_His dedication to you has taught me that there are other ways, better ways to live._

“Seriously, money only gets you so much. The bonds of friendship are so much stronger than anything you could buy.”

_Tell him I wish to learn at his feet. I must learn the ways of the Quizboy._

“You’re never gonna get Billy and me apart, so just stop tryin’.”

_I’m not deaf. I can hear that you’re not telling him what I asked._

“Oh yes,” St. Cloud sneered, “I’m sure Batman furnished all his crime-fighting equipment with brotherly love. What’s the going rate of that on the market now?”

“Dude, what? No!” Hank flipped around. “Don’t even invoke Batman, you are so far from Batman it’s not even funny!”

Rusty grabbed his son, spinning him around again. “Kids these days. Look, these issues will have to wait for another day. Do you hear that, gentleman? _Day._ I would like to take my idiot son home for a good night’s sleep before I ground him into oblivion.”

“Fine. I'll just go home and have have bathtime with my favorite toys. The original animatronic of Gizmo will lather up quite nicely.” St. Cloud drawled, accidentally walking into one of the locked lobby doors by accident.

Pete stopped Billy with a hand on his shoulder. “Let it go, Billy. We won the battle.”

“Ugh, but he’s executing the POW’s.” Billy put a hand to his forehead.

“Yeah, but look at the big picture here. We bested him again—yes, I'm getting to that,” he said to Pei Wie, tugging at his elbow. “And we proved his worldview wrong once more. If anything, _we_ had a Batman moment.”

Billy’s face unclouded. “Did we? Hey, we did!”

Hank snorted and muttered something about a Batmobile. Brock ruffled his hair, smiling paternally.

Billy turned from the lobby doors and started, finding Pei Wie mere inches from his face. The man’s slender fingers held an origami unicorn folded from silver foil paper. “Oh, ah, namaschte. That’s what thisch means, right?”

“He says thank you annnnd,” White squinted at his hands, “he’s making rice congee for breakfast.” He paused a moment. “Wait, what?”

~`~`~`~

_Ventech Tower, an earlier day_

White opened his eyes, a monumental task. He’d had hangovers of various shades and substances, but this one was up there. His body was still asleep, pins-and-needles spreading through all his limbs. For one terrifying second, he couldn’t remember where he was, what had happened, and what he was doing. Then Rusty loomed over him, scoolmarmishly crossing his arms.

“Brock,” he said in that whiny two-tone way that he had, “our little heroes are up. One of them anyway.”

Brock strolled into view, coffee mug dwarfed in his hand. “Hey big guy. We were starting to worry about you two.”

White meant to make a witty comment, but it came out _“hrnnnnngh.”_

Brock put two meaty fingers to White’s carotid artery. “You’re doin’ fine, just take it easy. Like surfacing from a deep dive. Don’t go too fast.”

“Yeah, I doubt he’ll get explosive decompression from nitrous sleep, Brock.”

Billy twitched like an angry hamster, starting awake with a jolt. _“Hwaaaagnnn.”_

“Oh good, you’re both up. You had us worried boys, but you passed your first guild-supplied arching with flying colors.”

Billy made several groaning noises in his chest.

“Now that numbness is probably from a mix of the nitrous and that stupid effects fog they were using.” Rusty propped Billy’s head at a steeper angle. “I almost had to let you sleep sitting up like the elephant man.”

White licked his dry lips. He tried looking down over his body using only his eyes, a move which made him slightly nauseous. He was still in Killer Drone’s tights, minus the ridiculous abdomen. They had removed the shell of Billy’s costume, leaving him only in shorts and tank top.

Billy groaned again. “W...w...w…”

“That’s it little guy, keep going.”

“Were...we...good?”

Rusty and Brock exchanged a conspiratorial look. “Oh, ah, yeah.” Rusty adjusted his glasses. “What...what do you remember?”

Billy swallowed. “We...we…”

“Yeah?”

“We kicked his asch!” Billy thrust his arms up, depleting his already low supply of physical energy. He fell sideways, slowly, sinking into White’s arm. This nudged White sideways until he, too, was lying on the couch.

“Yyyyyeah,” Brock said, not entirely convincingly, “you sure did, pal.”

Billy turned to White, smiling radiantly through the numbness. White smiled back. He had never, in his entire life, been in a successful fight. Yet somehow they had defeated a Monarch-backed St. Cloud. The blow to his self-esteem that had come with the hostile takeover of Conjectural Technologies was finally beginning to heal. They could do this.

~`~`~`~

_Ventech tower, penthouse_

Billy pointed a penlight into Hank’s eyes, pulling down his lower lid with a fingertip. “Are you having balancing isschuesch? Incontinence? Do you schmell burning toascht?”

“Jeez, no, I'm fine.” Hank hit his hand away. “I don’t need you hovering over me.”

“Um, no mister, you sit your buster browns down on that couch and let Billy examine you.” Rusty placed a hand on his head, pressing him into the sofa. “You were in the hospital with a concussion, you’re letting him run the full gamut of tests before I'm even considering letting you use the bathroom by yourself.”

“Truscht me, we want that to happen as much as you do,” Billy said to Hank.

“You’re just resentful because I made you take first watch.”

“Firscht off, you didn’t tell me it was firscht watch, you juscht tricked me into following Hank and then schut the door.”

“Well what do you want me to just leave the door open? I’m trying to afford the boy some dignity.”

“Thanks pop.”

“...until we can assess what if any injuries he has, whereupon he loses any and all rights to privacy.”

“Aww jeez.”

“Well that’s what you get for pulling a Richard Kimble, Hank. Now get your gown on, Billy has to perform a full cavity search.”

“I never agreed to that!”

White stood to the side, sipping a brandy/milk combination Hatred had whipped up to fight against the chill of the evening. He was quite happily forgotten in the proceedings.

Pei Wie had refused to leave Billy’s side, now he meditated before the giant viewscreen on the wall. The bean mural (having lost a few chickpeas on the journey) was now laying on the breakfast table.

From the corner of his eye, White noticed a clandestine series of motions as Brock slid the patio door open soundlessly and stepped outside. White gave it a good half a minute before he put his mug down and followed.

Brock was half-leaning, half-crouching against some upturned lawn furniture. “You know, sometimes a man likes to be alone.”

“In this tower? No such thing.” White blew into his hands and tap-danced to warm his feet. He couldn’t really think of anything to say after that, so they sat looking silently out over the city.

“Oh, uh, I never told you ‘sorry’ did I? For that thing back in college.”

White honestly had to think for a moment. “Oh yeah, the...the D&D game. Honestly? I’m kinda over it. I mean, it happened so long ago…”

“Yeah, well…” Brock looked uncomfortable as he always did when discussing emotions, specifically his own. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, about how I relate to people. Treat people. The OSI way gets stuff done, but...it’s not always the best way. Forgotten isn’t forgiven, if you know what I mean.”

White had a flash of memory, Brock diving into the fray of their little nerd gathering like a rabid wolf into a flock of chickens. Brock up in the penthouse, driving into Rusty with equal fervor.

“You try to do the right thing,” White said, sweeping his forelock out of the way, “even if it takes you a while to get there. We’re not that different, when it comes to things like that. You hurt the people you love, even if you don’t mean to, even if you don’t _want_ to, and-and they still forgive you—”

“—even if you tell yourself you don’t deserve it.” Brock took a drag. “I’ve been a lot of places, known a lot of people, but this has been the only place that felt like home to me. The only place I felt needed. I come back to it even if I tell myself it’s the wrong thing to do, it’s selfish.” he exhaled, steam from his breath mixing with the cigarette smoke in a giant cloud. “I killed the telepod, just so you know. Rusty signed the execution order, but I swung the ax. So you can probably stop giving him such a hard time. He didn’t want to, he held out pretty long in fact, but we pushed him until he bent.”

“Oh.” White wasn’t sure of what else to say. “I see.”

“You guys, you’re idea men. You want to work to make the world better. That’s great. That’s a good attitude to have. But it’s not the only attitude to have, and that’s why guys like me exist. I wish I could be like you sometimes, just be…” he gestured out at the city. “...excited for the future. But sometimes you have to be the party pooper, you have to think of the big picture in a way that makes everything look ugly, because there are people who can’t see it any other way. Doc gets caught up in the moment, gets all excited for the positive parts of the future—”

“—you ground him,” White said quietly, to himself. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I get it.”

Brock was looking at him carefully. “Good. There’ll be times I make decisions you might not understand because I have to follow orders I don’t like—”

“But you’d still bring a little hydrocephalic genius back to a desert trailer, because no one specifically told you not to.”

The only thing moving from Brock was the winding tail of cigarette smoke.

“I get you, big guy. You like to play a hard man, but you got a soft heart sometimes.”

Brock shook his head fondly, sucking in another lungful of smoke. “That’s what Doc says.”

“Well you should stick around. After all, he keeps you human.”

Brock hid his smirk with a cigarette. “Friggin’ smartass.”

The glass door slid open behind them, disclosing a series of yelping noises. Rusty poked his aggravated head out into the cold.

“Brock, where’s the Preparation H? Our little Batman has hemorrhoids from living in my half-brother’s yard and wiping with leaves.”

_“Look at thisch thing, it’sch the schize of Montana!”_

_“Stop poking it with your finger!”_

White and Brock shared a bemused look and went back inside.


	12. Welcome to your life

White half-stepped, half-slid into the kitchen area. Billy had pushed the foot stool up to the toaster that they had clustered onto the table, along with the toaster oven, rice cooker, and hot plate.

They had finally convinced Pei Wie to sleep in R&D, affording them a modicum of privacy. The silent albino was pretty much glued to their sides 24/7 now, refusing any offers of alternative work. Pete had to admit the guy had grown on him, giving him opportunity to flex some underused sign-language muscles. Also he made great dim sum.

Billy had a touch of stubble around his face, his robe hung just slightly open to show his much-loved Thundercats t-shirt and boxers that had been the previous nights sleepwear.

“Heya pally, happy Valentine’s day.”

Billy swallowed a yawn. “I’m making myself a toaschter waffle for breakfascht. You want in?”

White shifted from foot to foot, trying to contain his grin. “I dunno, do I look hungry to you?”

Billy turned around, smacking his lips as he stretched. He viewed White’s pose, standing with his hands behind his back, with suspicion.

White brought out a beautifully gilded envelope, silver on pink damask print, from behind his back. Billy’s mouth dropped open.

“Been waitin’ days to give you this, so you better open it quick.”

Billy scrabbled with the envelope, finally tearing across the flap with a wince. He unfolded the paper and made a little noise in his throat. “Aww, a full STD panel.” He lowered the paper, eyes crinkling merrily. “Okay, I can’t keep up thisch charade anymore.”

He lifted the reusable Rusty Venture placemat, revealing an envelope with a red velvet ribbon running along the back in mimic of gift wrap. White slid the results from their sheath and whistled low.

“Niiiice. Look who’s chlamydia-free.”

Billy leaned casually against the table, waggling his eyebrows. “Scho...Pink Pilgrim. Ya got any...plans today?”

“Well, I was planning on lunch with Al and Shoreleave, play Fallout 76 for a few hours,  plus I need to get to Best Buy before it closes.’’

“Aw, dude.”

“Kidding. I am _kidding_ . We are _so_ doing it right now.”

Billy actually fist-pumped. “Yesch! I am scho ready for this.”

He produced a remote from his robe pocket. White drew the curtains, making the light streaming into their room take on a blue hue. Berlin’s _Take my Breath Away_ queued up on the speakers. Billy lowered himself onto the sofa with a grin, White following. A series of awkward grunts followed.

“Oh shi—hang on, I think I’m snagged—”

“Ow, owowowow, take that out—”

“—well hang on, you’re twisting it—”

“Crap, there went the other schide.”

“Maybe if you raise up—no, to your left a little.”

“Ahhh.”

“Better?”

“Much.”

~`~`~`~

_Desert Trailer_

“Billy, have you seen—” Pete scrambled agitatedly under the couch. His lucky pink shirt already had damp patches around the pits.

“Have I scheen what?” Billy wandered in, drying a dish. He did a double-take at the jacket draped over a chair. “Whoa, charcoal? That’sch a departure from your normal schtyle. Who died?”

“A-a friend.” Pete squinted one eye closed as he groped the gap between floor and cushion. “From college. Old college buddy.”

“Oh.” Billy grew somber. “Schorry, I didn’t realize.” He set the plate on a nearby chair back and lifted the apron over his head, letting it drape at his waist. “What are you looking for?”

“My tie, you know, that one tie I never wear?”

“Oh. _Wellll,_ the lascht I saw of it, Ruschty had it tied around his head Rambo-schtyle when we went drinking around St. Paddy’s day and then he went down and cracked his head on a chair—”

“Alright, I get it.” White withdrew from the floor, rubbing at the mild carpet burn he’d sustained. Crap. That meant raiding his foundation drawer again. Though his skin regimen wasn’t quite what it had been on the set of Quizboys, he was still paranoid of any redness.

“Why don’t you juscht wear that jewel thing you always wear?” Billy was watching him with mild worry.

“Because I always wear it. It’s a _funeral_ , Billy.” White frowned at his part in the mirror.

“Who’sche going, the queen mother?” Billy lined up behind him, his large cranium just visible over Pete’s shoulder. “Why are you scho worried?”

“I’m not, I just—” White sniffed, scrubbing his finger along his upper lip. An old coke tic. They both knew. “It hits home, ya know? No one from the old days was supposed to die yet. I mean...plenty of people have died since then, but in, like, regular ways. A giant death ray, or robbing a bank with an exploding collar. Not from an old-people thing.”

“Can I come along?”

Four little words White had been dreading. He sighed, letting his lids drop down so he didn’t have to look at Billy. “I dunno. It’s kind of a personal thing.”

“Yeah, I get it.” When he dared open his eyes again, Billy wasn’t frowning, he was smiling ever so slightly. “I juscht figured you could use some moral support.”

Pete smiled. He could, he really could. But…

“See you in a few hours?” he said. He remembered saying it exactly like that, as a question, because the irony of it came back to bite him later when he sat in the damp chill of a cell, next to a jawless Werner Underbheit, forgotten by his supposed best friend once more.

Werner made a gelatinous sound. Pete cringed.

“Ugh. Could you not,” he gestured, “you know.”

Werner moved his tongue like a beheaded snake. “Hgraaarghagh.”

“Look, it’s bad enough us being stuck here. You know I can’t understand you talking like this so just-just stop tryin’, okay?” White crossed his legs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Christ, this is like bein’ back in the dorm when you burned your mouth on that damn toaster strudel.”

Werner gestured out into the hall.

“Yeah, I know. But I can’t go get your jaw, I'm just as stuck here as you are.” White pulled the chain to demonstrate.

“Hgugh glaglagargh.”

“Right? Imagine holding this big a grudge over some school pranks.” White shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s not like anyone died. I mean, back then. He’s dead now. But not…” He tried to fend off visions of Mike being loaded into an ambulance, face puffed to three times its normal size. It was just a harmless prank, how were they supposed to know he had an allergy? Sure, he skipped italian day in the cafeteria, but White just figured it was because he hated tomatoes. And he’d said sorry! Sure, he was drowned out by the siren, and he didn’t repeat himself even after Mike came back to school, but that didn’t make him a villain like Underbheit.

He snuck a glance at his seat-mate, who was testing his tongue with fingertips. Gross. Figured they were stuck together in the dorms, they’d be stuck here too.

White drew his knees in and began brewing an extra-strong regimen of self-pity. Of course Rusty forgot him, it was just like in the old days. White wasn’t worth knowing if he wasn’t doing something for you. Rusty hadn’t even said goodbye, forgetting completely the second White was behind him. That’s how it had been in college too, Rusty getting into that company car without so much as a backward glance. He hadn’t even told anyone his father had died, White only learned it while skimming the news for talking points(an old habit even though the White Room was no more.)

And then there was one.

Werner had landed in the hospital, not for the beat down visited upon them by Rusty’s mysterious roommate but for the lab explosion that took his jaw and hair. Mike avoided Pete completely after he got out of the infirmary. White didn’t even have the outlet of DJing at that point, he was just stuck alone in his dorm with Werner’s manservant sleeping in the corner night after night. Yeesh.

He wondered how long until night fell, if it wasn’t night already. How many days until they drank their own urine out of desperation. How many days until one of them (Underbheit, let’s be real here) decided cannibalism was better than death in a cold cell. How many—

“White?”

No way.

White stood up. Steps echoed through the broken wall. “Billy?”

“White? Oh thank god, I thought you jetted out of here with the gang. I would’ve felt like a total tool.” Billy appeared at the doorway, stepping gingerly over the rubble. “Looksch like a lot happened here, schorry I missed it.”

“No you’re not, it was awful.”

“Muscht’ve been one hell of a funeral.” Billy, hands on his hips, surveyed the room.

“To say the least.” White frowned. “You didn’t happen to bring a lockpick with you, did you?”

“Oh, uh, no, but I found his jaw in the hall.” Billy held the jagged piece of metal up.

“Beautiful. Who here thinks they know how to pick locks with this thing?”

Underbheit grabbed at his missing prosthetic, making irritated sloshing noises in his throat. Billy handed him the jaw, averting his gaze.

Once the metal clicked back in place, Underbheit hacked several times. “I. Vas. Signaling. I vas telling you to hand me a piece of rubble so I could chip away at ze chain!”

“Oh yeah, we’d be right out of here. That would only take, what, a year?” Now that he knew he was getting out the blackness ebbed from his thoughts, letting his cocky sarcasm emerge once more. “Billy, you got your watch tools with you?”

“Vat kind of dork carries a vatch kit around vith them?”

“The kinda dork that’s here to schave your bacon,” Billy said, pointing at Underbheit’s gruesome mug.

They operated on his collar first, White on standby as Billy’s nurse.

“Flathead.”

“Flathead.”

“Brow.”

White mopped Billy’s forehead with his handkerchief.

“Schpring bar tool.”

“Spring bar tool.”

“Schpit.”

White stepped away as Underbheit hocked in the corner.

“I think I've—”

With a minor metallic twang, the lock sprang open. Underbheit stood, rolling his neck.

“Good God, I zought I vas going to be stuck here all night.” he turned to grimace at the pair. “I suppose you are wanting a ride now, as if we are the bosom buddies?”

“Nah, we’re good,” White said hastily, “you just, ah, lumber off back to Underland. Good seein’ ya, Werner.”

Underbheit, who had been ducking through the hole in the wall, paused. He dipped back into the room a bit.

“It has been too many years, Vite. you must come have a taste of Underland hospitality sometime.”

“Uh, no thanks, I don’t really swing that way.”

Underbheit facepalmed. “I vas inviting you to visit my homeland, scheisskopf.” He went, grumbling, through the hole.

“Jeez, what’s up his assch?” Billy worked at White’s lock, tongue tucked in the corner of his mouth.

“I dunno, this whole day has been…” White drew a deep breath. “Can we just get this over with so we can go home and finish season 3 of _Greatest American Hero?”_

“Scho I take it the reunion was not a schuccess?” the lock sprang and Billy fist-pumped. “How did thisch even happen, anyway? Weren’t you at leascht a little suspicious that a guy would only have four people at his funeral?”

“Not really.” White stood, rubbing his neck.

“What, you’d expect more than four people at your funeral, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t expect anyone at my funeral, Billy.”

Billy snorted. _“I’d_ be at your funeral, and I'm sure as hell going to outlive you.”

“No ya wouldn’t.” White’s jacket caught on a bit of broken wall and ripped. Didn’t matter. He was tossing it when he got home anyway.

“Why? Why do you think that?”

White stopped, peering down at the broken remains of a Leslie-bot. “I dunno, I just...don’t think you’d want to.” He really didn’t know how to tell Billy it was nothing personal, he had just never seen anyone caring enough about his life to see him off into the next one. But Billy being Billy, he took it personal.

“Dude, not only am I coming to your funeral, I am leading the mourners in a tear-jerking rendition of _Who Wants To Live Forever,_ the schaddest schong from the Highlander schoundtrack.”

They had followed the trail of rampage outside Soriyama’s hideout to the Scuttlebutt (an ill-fated precursor to the Conjecture Cycle) and now that there was room Billy turned around to face him.

“You are not turning my wake into a karaoke jam, Billy. You can’t have karaoke with just one person.”

“There would be plenty of people.”

“Really? Name five.”

Billy ticked them off on his flesh hand. “One: Ruschty. Two: Brock. Three and four: the boys. Four-B: H.E.L.P.E.R. Five: jawless Joe over there.”

“Underbheit wouldn’t spit on me if I were on fire.”

“Scho? All the more reason to come to your funeral.” Billy fussily straightened White’s jacket. “Anyway, I could name more, but the agreement was five.”

White stood crookedly, staring down at this meticulous little manchild. He really hadn’t ever stepped back and examined it, but he had genuinely thought he’d step off this mortal coil completely alone. Why? Well...it just seemed like the natural order of things. Everyone left him. Even if they came back, they left again, like Rusty.

Everyone.

He watched Billy fire up the engine.

Was this funeral all a revenge-based charade? You would think that a robotics expert would have more than four people at his funeral, but then again maybe not. All his hard work and innovation and the only people to bear his casket to the ground were people he hated.

“Are you coming, White?”

White spent the journey home staring off into the distance.

~`~`~`~

_VenTech tower_

Hank was back. Good. great. Rusty recovered, and the mediocrely-oiled machine that was VenTech industry resumed motion once more. Fan-tucking-fastic. He and Billy had now moved into the realm of intimate physical contact, and were getting quite good at it. _Wunderbar_. White went three weeks of unfettered R&D, three weeks of movie nights with Billy tucked into the crook of his shoulder, three weeks of peaceful normality before the switch flipped.

_This is wrong_.

White stopped, shoulders squared, staring dead ahead. There was a sense of complete wrongness that inundated everything all of the sudden, soaking his life until everything was soggy with wrong. He looked down at his hands, dropping the wrench he’d been carrying unceremoniously. What was he doing? Pretending to have a life? Playing house?

He backed away from the console. He had to go. Now.

What was it Billy had said to him? You’d never do it in person?

White fled the tower, no bag, no plan, just the anxiety-adrenaline fueling his feet. His sympathetic nervous system hissed _flee._ So he did.

He made it all the way down the tower, though the lobby and into Columbus circle before second thoughts caught up with him. His steps slowed like he was wading through tar and finally he came to rest on a bench. He couldn’t go back to the tower, but he couldn’t go on. He sat.

He didn’t know how much time had elapsed, but finally he saw a small figure leave the tower, growing larger by degrees until he could make out Billy’s blue coat and ticked expression. Billy had a satchel strung over one shoulder like he was going out on errands, but he stopped before the bench.

“Scho,” he said levelly, “we’re doing thisch again?”

White said nothing.

“What set it off thisch time? Did I pick the wrong James Spader movie?”

White shook his head.

“Is it cause I ate the last freezer burrito? The fact that I accidentally got kettle corn instead of theater butter popcorn? What?”

White put his head in his hands. “Nothing, Billy.”

“Bull- _shit_ on that. _Nothing, Billy?”_

“Nothing,” White said, bewilderment filling his voice, “nothing set me off. I have absolutely nothing to complain about. My life is so perfect it should be on the Hallmark channel.”

He looked up, expecting Billy to be eyeing him like a crazy person. Instead, Billy was just...Billy.

“Do you understand?”

“Not really. But I want to.” Billy hefted the satchel from his shoulder and sat beside White. “Tell me.”

White fumbled for words like a tie beneath a couch, a tie that may never have been there in the first place.

“It’s just...wrong, Billy. I didn’t do anything to deserve this.” he gestured up at the tower.

Billy sighed. “Your imposter schyndrome picksch the worst time to manifescht, I schwear.” He put his hand in White’s. “Okay, think of it like this: it’sch not about what you deserve. It’sch about what I deserve.”

White frowned at Billy. “What?”

“I worked hard, I put in the hours. Don’t I deserve a cushy tech job and a hot boyfriend?” Billy was giving one of his cheesy grins, and any other time it would have hit White straight in the heart.

But instead he said: “I kissed Shoreleave.”

Billy arched his eyebrows, dangerously calm. “...I know.”

“What? How?”

“Shoreleave told me. No schecrets between OSI agents.”

“B-but you’re not OSI,” he sputtered.

“Practically. They still have me on standby.” Billy looked at White. “Shoreleave said he didn’t want any bad blood between us, seeing as they’re coming over for Cardsch Against Humanity night next week. He told me you were confused, he helped un-confuse you.”

“I kissed Rusty—”

“We’ve been over this—”

“—I had a sexual relationship with Rusty and I totally snorted blow off that hooker’s chest the night of the Venture boy’s prom. Who the hell would want me as a boyfriend?”

“I do, we’ve been over this.”

“Well I don’t get it!” White exploded, standing. He paced before the bench. “I don’t get how this all works! Why are we all the sudden fine, I don’t—” he started to wobble. “Why was it so hard before and it’s easy now?”

“Look, White, you’re overthinking this.” Billy had opened the satchel and was now pouring steaming liquid from a thermos into a cup. “Everytime we pass that speed bump we—what?” he asked at White’s look of shock. He glanced down at the cup. “Oh. Chicken soup, I figured you’d be cold.”

White just looked at Billy, shaking his head.

“I love you,” he blurted out.

Billy just looked at him for a second before laughing to himself quietly. “You pick the weirdescht time to confess these things. Anything else you wanna throw out? Did you kidnap the Lindbergh baby?”

“I mean it,” White said, hurt.

“I know ya do, I'm just pulling your chain.” Billy handed him the cup of soup, guiding his hand with all the attentiveness of a mother. “I don’t know where you get thisch idea of yourself as a big, bad villain, White, honeschtly.”

“Life,” White said simply.

Billy chuckled. “Look, neither of us is perfect. But I think we’re perfect for each other. I know good things scare you, because they scare me too. I’m always waiting for the other schoe to drop.”

“Yeah, but you’re never the one under the heel.”

“Bullcrap. We’re in thisch together, White. Ride or die. You go, I go.”

White stared at Billy, over the steaming rim of his soup cup, brow furrowed. He felt like he was seeing Billy, really seeing him, for the first time. Those crow’s feet that belied the boy genius title he still clung to, the way his eyepatch indented over the cavity of his lost eye, the stubborn thrust of his chin. Billy, who remained upright no matter how the world beat him down. Billy, who wore his scars as pridefully as Shoreleave wore his OSI tattoos. Billy, who regarded the world not as a problem but a mystery to be solved.

White handed the soup back. “I gotta—I have to go do—something.”

He walk-jogged back to the tower, bemused Quizboy trailing in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for another week gap, I was sick :( Thanks everyone for leaving such lovely comments, it kept me going when I was living off Gatorade and ramen. 
> 
> Yes, we are nearing the end, very near in fact, and I'm in that bittersweet area that occupies the space between now and then. I'm full of relief for the conclusion of yet another project, but sorrow because I'm ending this particular set of adventures. See you in the last chapter!


	13. Modern Love

Billy was fanning through schematics for the Conjecture cycle MkII when White tossed an oblong shape into the middle of it all. “there!”

Billy picked up his offering and squinted. “...a cassette tape?”

“A mix tape.”

Billy snort-laughed. “A mix tape? What are you, a girl in a Cameron Crowe movie?”

“Dude, I'm serious. That tape contains the most important thing I'll ever say to you.”

“I’m right here, just say it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can't! Look,” he fanned his hand at the tape. “You like solving puzzles, right? Solve this one.”

Billy squinted down at the tape. “All right, well, I guess I'll go dig my cassette player out of schtorage.”

~`~`~`~

“Thisch is a bad idea.”

“C’mon, we finished prep on the cycle. We have to have a karaoke jam.”

“Why don’t we just play...I dunno, charades or something.”

“Because he is waaay to good at that,” White said, gesturing at where Pei Wie stood before them.

“Oh yesch, and that makes scho much less schense than throwing a karaoke jam WITH A MUTE GUY.” Billy turned to Pei Wie. “No offence.”

Pei Wie shrugged.

“I mean, what can he posschibly do?”

The silent albino held up one finger, turning his back to scroll through the song list. After he selected a song he turned back to Billy and Pete, mic held before his thin pink lips.

_John Cage—4’33”_ flashed on the screen. Pei Wie stared at them, mic held up to his closed mouth, perfectly deadpan.

“...okay, I have to admit that’s kind of brilliant.”

“How the hell is that schong on a karaoke machine?”

~`~`~`~

Billy listened to the tape. And then he rewound it and listened to it again. He did this five times in succession. He picked up a legal pad and began scribbling with notes. By the third pass, he needed a fresh pad of paper.

He approached White, who was attempting to feign nonchalance with the help of Wii tennis.

“Okay. There’s only four schongs, and they aren’t even in the same genre. It has to do with schong length, right?”

“Wrong.” White smashed his next shot. Thirty-love. He smiled.

“Okay, then it’s schomething to do with the schong titles? Maybe an anagram, or a cypher. Is there schupplementary material?”

“It’s just a tape, Billy.”

~`~`~`~

“I’m telling you, _Lure of the Spider Queen_ is hands down the best episode of season 3!”

“Whaaat? Completely ignoring the brilliance of _Professor Perish’s Dastardly Machine?”_

“Okay, that might have had a more tightly-written plot, but the Spider Queen is a camp classic. I modeled my first drag performance after her.”

“Aw cool, I didn’t know you did drag.”

“In the olden days, my friend, I haven’t donned the pumps since growing this bad boy here.” Shoreleave pet his moustache.

Al was reclining sidelong in his chair, resting his head against his curled arm. “Oh. My god. Can you just play your cards already? We’re in the middle of a game, gentlemen.”

“Okay fine.” Shoreleave flapped his hand at White, who glanced away as they completed the card pile before him. Shuffling the deck blind, he held up the cards.

“Due to a toxic oil spill, the EPA is warning people to be on the lookout for birth defects such as: a) One titty out, b) My abusive boyfriend who really isn't so bad once you get to know him, c) the—” he made a strangled choking noise, “—the Monarch’s giant fucked-up eyebrows. Oh my god, I _love_ this expansion pack. Who had eyebrows?”

Al smugly raised his hand and received the black card.

“Whaaaat? Why does he keep getting them?”

“Maybe if ya stop talking about cartoons every five seconds you’ll actually win a round.”

Shoreleave picked up a card from the black deck. “First date off the Grindr app. You meet at Applebee’s, the guy looks nothing like his profile photo and is carrying _blank.”_

Billy’s face lit up. “Ohhh my god, I have the _bescht_ card for thisch.”

“Well say it, don’t spray it.”

They all riffled through their cards. White came across one that said “a sexbot that looks just like my college girlfriend” and smirked to himself.

~`~`~`~

The next day at lunch, Billy came to the table looking like Guy Pierce in _Memento._ “It’s a morse code thing, right?”

“Nope.”

“Then the time signatures, they mean something.”

“Nope.” White was actually enjoying finally having something over on Billy, badly as he wanted him to solve it.

Billy growled and held his head. “Thisch is crazy!”

“Do you want a hint?”

“Hints are for weaklings! I’m heading to my enigma machine.”

~`~`~`~

_“...relinquish control of the city’s financial centers,”_ St. Cloud’s monotone drawl oozed out of the speakers placed on the exterior of his latest vehicle, a flying saucer nearly identical to the one on the cover of Boston’s _Don’t Look Back_ album.

Billy squinted. “Whaa-aat?”

St. Cloud had parked the saucer at an inconvenient distance, hovering just far enough from the VenTech penthouse that his announcement was muddied by the sound of its own rockets.

“Something about some gal callled Nancy Enter?” Pete cupped his hands around his mouth. “TURN! UP! YOUR! SPEAKERS!”

They were rewarded with a feedback squeal that made them duck and throw hands over their ears.

“This is ridiculous, he is _ruining_ my morning.” Rusty, still in slippers and robe, put his hands on his hips.

“Never fear, loyal citizen, you can leave this in the capable hands of Quizboy and the Pink Pilgrim.” Billy waved him away. “Juscht go back inschide. It won’t take that long.”

“How am I supposed to enjoy the paper with this nonsense blaring outside my window? If I wanted my day interrupted by idiots and broken intercom feedback I’d go bunk with the boys at school.”

Billy gave White a knowing look. “Thisch is looking hairy, my old chum.”

White nodded. “Okay, White Shadow, you ready to do some recognizance?”

Pei Wie, garbed in milk-pale ninja robes, nodded sharply.

“Oh, recognizance? What’sch he gonna do, jump and grab onto one of those rockets?” Billy turned and beckoned to the ship. “HEY! BRING! THE! SHIP! IN! CLOSER!”

“What?” the speakers crackled.

“WE! CAN’T! REACH! YOU! COME! OVER! HERE!”

“Glum over beer? What nonsense is this, Quizboy?”

Rusty pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. “I could be asleep right now. I could still be in bed.”

Billy waved at the ship, making exaggerated gestures with his arms. “COME! OVER! HERE! WE! FIGHT! ON—”

Something shot into one of the rockets and exploded. The saucer lost lateral control and fell, wobbling, to the ground.

“Heyy!” the irritated crime fighting duo (and sidekick) turned to where Brock had shouldered a grenade launcher.

“I’m sorry, but that was just getting obnoxious.”

“Thank you Brock,” Rusty said smugly.

“He ruined our battle!”

“Oh he did _not,_ just go down to the ground floor and confront him there.” Rusty turned to the penthouse, making shooing motions with his hands.

Grumbling, the trio followed to the elevator.

“Didn’t even get to use my schpeech,” Billy muttered as the doors closed on Pete’s cape.

~`~`~`~

White was lounging and reading an issue of _Cat Fancy,_ well, _Hatred’s_ issue of _Cat Fancy._ He wasn’t sure why he’d begun stealing the security guard’s magazine, but he didn’t feel like stopping anytime soon.

Billy dragged himself across the living room, panting. “Okay, truce. I’m stumped.”

“You want a hint?”

“I want _anything,_ this is killing me.”

White smiled, savoring this last moment of superiority. “Well, what do you like to do when you’re planning something?”

“Huh?”

“Make a list.”

“Scho I list all the times the singer takes a breath or how many backing musicians—”

“Just. make. a. list.”

Billy fetched a mechanical pencil and began writing out the songs on the tape. When he was finished he looked it over, bleary-eyed, until something clicked. He dropped the pencil and said “oh.”

His list read:

_Will It Go Round In Circles - Billy Preston_

_You Are So Wild - Boy George_

_Marry the Night - Lady Gaga_

_Me and Mrs. Jones - Billy Paul_

Billy looked at White, lone eye watering and teary. He bolted, scrambling for something in the couch cushions. He emerged triumphant, eyepatch band migrated over his ear. Clutched in his sweaty grasp was an ipod, which he proceed to shuffle through for several minutes until he found what he was looking for. The thumping drum track to Yello’s _Oh Yeah_ blasted through the tiny speakers.

White smiled.

~`~`~`~

“Through here.”

“Schit, does my tie look all right?” Billy’s thin little bit of formal wear was a rose pink, clashing oddly with the gray suit he wore.

White straightened the knot. “Good to go. How’s my jawline, should I try blending some more?”

“Juscht don’t look at the ceiling, no one will notice.” Billy fidgeted. “Mom schays the Action Man can schit up without help now.”

“Ah great, I don’t wanna have to stop the ceremony to have to prop up an octogenarian.”

“It’ll be fine, it’s fine,” Billy chanted as they trotted along the hall.

Rusty was standing at the door, carnation boutonniere in his ruffle-chested tux jacket like a pink flag. “Oh my god, how can you two be late to a wedding?”

“Um, hello? We share a bathroom, that’s how. He was re-doing his part while we were in the taxi.”

“It’s crooked!”

“It is not crooked, don’t re-do it again!” Billy looked at Rusty. “Is she in there?”

“Everyone is.” Rusty paused a moment, evaluating the two with a small smile. “Well?”

“Well?”

“Are you gentlemen ready?”

Taking a steep breath and holding it, White looked at Billy. Billy nodded.

Grinning, Rusty swung the doors open.

Al leaned casually against the altar, chatting to Colonel Gentleman. He straightened up immediately when he saw the doors.

“Ooookay gentlemen, it’s showtime.”

White nodded familiarly at Billy’s mother when he reached the front. “Hiya Rose.”

“Oh I'm scho glad everyone’s here now. Aren’t you glad Rodney?” she turned to the man seated to her left, who untangled his arm from his oxygen tube to wave at them.

“Um, mom, are you schure he’s…” Billy gestured vaguely.

“Oh he wouldn’t miss this for the world, Billy, you know that. Now you go on ahead and say your words, Albert.”

Al, who had been called “Albert” all morning without once correcting her, smiled.

“Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to get through this thing called life,” he began.

_“Get off the stage,”_ Hank muttered _soto voce._ He and Dermot snickered, both elbowed into silence by Dean.

“Now, your regular-style priests would have a lot of fancy-schmancy words to say, like marriage is a spell you can unlock with the right combination of syllables. But I'm here to tell you right now, love just happens. It can happen on the street, it can happen in the rain, it can happen on a boat, it can happen on the train, it can happen between the unlikeliest kind of people.”

Shoreleave, man of honor in a spangly gold tux, winked at him.

“It can happen after years of being seperated, of being ignored and denied. But it keeps on a-goin’, because it is a persistent little beast.”

Rose beamed at Rodney, clutching their hands between their two bodies.

“So if anyone here today knows of any reason that these two may not be wed…” Al paused, “shut the hell up, because nobody cares. You may now kiss each other, you crazy kids.”

In perfect choreography, White turned and bent so that he would catch Billy’s mouth as he went up on tiptoe. The audience collectively awwed.

“So are they, like, our uncles now?”

“Who cares? I wanna know who’s pitching and who’s catching—ow!” Dermot rubbed his ear, looking behind him. Pei Wie slid back in his seat, ticking a disapproving finger at him.

Rusty sniffled and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “Wow. We all saw this coming, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, give or take a few decades.” Brock smiled at the couple. He looked sharp in his OSI uniform, pink carnation tucked in his knife hilt.

“Who do you think will be next to tie the knot?”

The two men surreptitiously, looked sideways at each other, dropping their gaze the second they made eye contact.

“Rose maybe?”

“Yeah, my money’s on Al and Shoreleave,” Brock mumbled, rubbing his neck.

After Rose left twin lipstick prints on their cheeks, Billy and Pete stood center aisle, grasping hands.

“And now, with that hullabaloo out of the way, the happy couple will now take their first dance.”

A chuckling guitar chord progression sounded out from the speakers. As the bright tinkle of synth keyboards joined Bowie’s vocals, Billy and Pete danced as awkwardly as two nerds could.

“Ridiculous. The song is about how he doesn’t _believe_ in modern love,” the Monarch grumbled. He flinched as his wife swatted his shoulder.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” she said in her phlegmy rumble, dabbing her eyes with a royal purple handkerchief, “could you not spoil it?”

“I have to thank you again for coming, Malcolm,” Rusty said, leaning his elbow on the pew.

After a warning pinch from Sheila, the Monarch grit his teeth and said, “fine.”

Rusty was watching the newly-wedded pair dance, blinking an excessive amount. “They really do go well together, don’t they?”

Sheila snuffled. “This marks the end of a chapter in their lives, doesn’t it?”

“This may be the end of a chapter, but it also signifies the beginning of a new story,” Gary said, sitting ramrod-straight in his tuxedo t-shirt as he waxed poetic. “The journey through a shared life.”

Sheila dabbed at her eyes. “That was wonderful Gary.”

Rusty smiled. “Yeah. A new story.” he paused. “...for another day.”

The Monarch nodded. “Yeah, I'm a little storied-out after this.”

They watched as the couple stepped, slid, and centered around the dance floor, their lack of coordination equaled only by how little they cared how it looked to anyone else.

_Modern love walks on by..._  
_Modern love gets me to the church on time..._  
_Terrifies me..._  
_Makes me party..._ _  
Puts my trust in God and man..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *deep breath*
> 
> my thanks to everyone who read and reviewed, everyone who read and didn't review, everyone who read it and enjoyed it, everyone who read it and enjoyed parts of it, everyone who read it and hated it and then hate-read it all the way to the end
> 
> thank you


End file.
